Why all that fuzz about the virtual keyword? [closed]

开发者_C百科 It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form. For help clarifying this question so that it can be reopened, visit the help center. Closed 11 years ago.

When reading the documentation of one or another boost library, I encountered some statements giving a hint that the virtual keyword is kind of evil. See http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_46_1/libs/msm/doc/HTML/ch03s05.html, for example:

It will not be said that MSM forces the virtual keyword down your throat!

According to http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/virtual-functions.html#faq-20.4, the virtual keyword is really not that bad, and my feeling about it is the same.

Why do some of the boost people regard virtual function calls as the worst thing ever? I have the impression that the boost guys are really the experts on C++, so there must be something about it.

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there is case where static polymorphism is preferred to dynamic one. That's what Christophe states here. Nothing more.

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Runtime polymorphism has an extra cost, namely the vtable. Once the vtable is added in a type, it can't be removed. One of the core strengths of C++ is that "you only pay for what you use". Therefore, to keep objects as lean as possible, several libraries avoid virtual functions when possible. Not because it is evil, but because you may not want it.

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I think the inference is that MSM does not, through its inner workings or structure, force you to declare members of your own code as virtual, or to override theirs. There are libraries that require this, for instance libraries that dynamically create "proxies" of your classes such as mocks or lazy-loaders.