returning an abstract class from a function

Question

Is it possible to return an abstract class(class itself or a reference, doesn\'t matter) from a function?

Answer 1

I know I'm little late but I hope this will help someone...

Being a newbie in C++ programming, I've also been stuck for a while on that problem. I wanted to create a factory method that returns an reference to an abstract object. My first solution using pointers worked well but I wanted to stay in a more "C++ manner". Here is the code snippet I wrote to demonstrate it:

#include 

using std::cout;
using std::endl;

class Abstract{
public:
  virtual void foo() = 0;
};

class FirstFoo: public Abstract{
  void foo()
  {
    cout << "Let's go to the foo bar!" << endl;
  }
};

class SecondFoo: public Abstract{
  void foo()
  {
    cout << "I prefer the foo beer !" << endl;
  }
};

Abstract& factoryMethod(){
  static int what = 0;

  if(what++ % 2 == 0)
    return *(new FirstFoo());
  else
    return *(new SecondFoo());
}

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
  int howMany = 10;
  int i = 0;

  while(i++ < howMany)
  {
    Abstract& abs = factoryMethod();
    abs.foo();
    delete &abs;
  }
}

Open to any critism !