using a method declared in derived class

Question

I am developing a BlackBerry 10 apps with Cascades in C++. I'm just a beginner, and this problem really confused me. I have a class Parser and a derived class LicenseParser.

Class Parser {
    // implementation
}

and

Class LicenseParser : public Parser {
    // ...
    public:
    void Parse();
}

In another file:

Parser* p= new LicenseParser();
p->Parse();

But I got an error:

class Parser' has no member named 'parse'

The method Parse is declared in the derived class so I know it can be used without declaring it in the Parser class!
How should I correct this?

Answer 1

The error occurs because p is a pointer to a Parser, not a pointer to a LicenseParser.

Despite the fact the you know the p actually points to a LicenseParser, your assignment to a base class pointer means that you choose to not let the compiler know anything about it.

You should either have a virtual Parse member function in the base class, or have the variable p be a LicenseParser* instead.