Pointers to virtual member functions. How does it work?

Question

Consider the following C++ code:

class A
{
public:
      virtual void f()=0;
};


int main()
{
     void (A::*f)()=&A::f;
}

If I\'d hav

Answer 1

I'm not entirely certain, but I think it's just regular polymorphic behavior. I think that &A::f actually means the address of the function pointer in the class's vtable, and that's why you aren't getting a compiler error. The space in the vtable is still allocated, and that is the location you are actually getting back.

This makes sense because derived classes essentially overwrite these values with pointers to their functions. This is why (a->*f)() works in your second example - f is referencing the vtable that is implemented in the derived class.