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c++oopinheritanceforward-declaration

Forward Declaration of Classes in C++


I've written the following code I was going to run through to help me review inheritance and how dispatching/double dispatching works in C++ but it won't compile. I've looked up class prototyping/forward declarations and I've done that but I'm still getting an error "B is an incomplete type", "SubB is an incomplete type", etc. What's the problem?

#include <iostream>

class B;
class SubB;

class A { 
    public:
        void talkTo(B b){
            std::cout << "A talking to instance of B" << std::endl;
        }
        void talkTo(SubB sb){
            std::cout << "A talking to instance of SubB" << std::endl;
        }
};
class SubA : A {
    public:
        void talkTo(B b){
            std::cout << "SubA talking to instance of B" << std::endl;
        }
        void talkTo(SubB sb){
            std::cout << "SubA talking to instance of SubB" << std::endl;
        }
};
class B { 
    public:
        void talkTo(A a){
            std::cout << "B talking to instance of A" << std::endl;
        }
        void talkTo(SubA sa){
            std::cout << "B talking to instance of SubA" << std::endl;
        }
};
class SubB : B {
    public:
        void talkTo(A a){
            std::cout << "SubB talking to instance of A" << std::endl;
        }
        void talkTo(SubA sa){
            std::cout << "SubB talking to instance of SubA" << std::endl;
        }
};

EDIT

Changing the parameters to references made this work (help from R Sahu) but why doesn't this work now?

class A { 
    public:
        void talkTo(B &b){
            //std::cout << "A talking to instance of B" << std::endl;
            b.talkTo(this);
        }
        void talkTo(SubB &sb){
            //std::cout << "A talking to instance of SubB" << std::endl;
            sb.talkTo(this);
        }
};
class B { 
    public:
        void talkTo(A &a){
            std::cout << "B talking to instance of A" << std::endl;
        }
        void talkTo(SubA &sa){
            std::cout << "B talking to instance of SubA" << std::endl;
        }
};
class SubB : B {
    public:
        void talkTo(A &a){
            std::cout << "SubB talking to instance of A" << std::endl;
        }
        void talkTo(SubA &sa){
            std::cout << "SubB talking to instance of SubA" << std::endl;
        }
};

A a;
SubA subA;
B b;
SubB subB;

a.talkTo(b);
a.talkTo(subB);

Solution

  • When you have a forward declaration, you can use the type only be reference: pointers and references are most obvious references.

    Instead of

        void talkTo(B b){
            std::cout << "A talking to instance of B" << std::endl;
        }
        void talkTo(SubB sb){
            std::cout << "A talking to instance of SubB" << std::endl;
        }
    

    use

        void talkTo(B const& b){
            std::cout << "A talking to instance of B" << std::endl;
        }
        void talkTo(SubB const& sb){
            std::cout << "A talking to instance of SubB" << std::endl;
        }