Can you cache a virtual function lookup in C++?

Question

Say I have a virtual function call foo() on an abstract base class pointer, mypointer->foo(). When my app starts up, based on the contents of a file, it chooses to instantiate a

Answer 1

I have seen situations where avoiding a virtual function call is beneficial. This does not look to me to be one of those cases because you really are using the function polymorphically. You are just chasing one extra address indirection, not a huge hit, and one that might be partially optimized away in some situations. If it really does matter, you may want to restructure your code so that type-dependent choices such as virtual function calls are made fewer times, pulled outside of loops.

If you really think it's worth giving it a shot, you can set a separate function pointer to a non-virtual function specific to the class. I might (but probably wouldn't) consider doing it this way.

class MyConcrete : public MyBase
{
public:
  static void foo_nonvirtual(MyBase* obj);
  virtual void foo()
  { foo_nonvirtual(this); }
};

void (*f_ptr)(MyBase* obj) = &MyConcrete::foo_nonvirtual;
// Call f_ptr instead of obj->foo() in your code.
// Still not as good a solution as restructuring the algorithm.

Other than making the algorithm itself a bit wiser, I suspect any attempt to manually optimize the virtual function call will cause more problems than it solves.