References and inheritence

[GlennC]

Hi everyone,

I want to define a class hierarchy where all classes inherited from the base class inherit a member which is a reference. Is this possible since references need to be initialized? Is declaring a reference within a class a normal thing to do?

Cheers,

Glenn

[Disch]

This is perfectly doable.

The inherited reference is typically constructed in the ctor of the parent class:

class Parent
{
public:
  Parent(int& target)
    : nRef( target )             // initialize the reference
  {
  }

protected:
  int& nRef;
};

class Child : public Parent
{
public:
  Child(int& target)
    : Parent(target)
  {
  }
};

[GlennC]

Great - thank you.