Pure virtual function with implementation
To be clear, you are misunderstanding what = 0; after a virtual function means.
= 0 means derived classes must provide an implementation, not that the base class can not provide an implementation.
In practice, when you mark a virtual function as pure (=0), there is very little point in providing a definition, because it will never be called unless someone explicitly does so via Base::Function(...) or if the Base class constructor calls the virtual function in question.
A pure virtual
function must be implemented in a derived type that will be directly instantiated, however the base type can still define an implementation. A derived class can explicitly call the base class implementation (if access permissions allow it) by using a fully-scoped name (by calling A::f()
in your example - if A::f()
were public
or protected
). Something like:
class B : public A {
virtual void f() {
// class B doesn't have anything special to do for f()
// so we'll call A's
// note that A's declaration of f() would have to be public
// or protected to avoid a compile time problem
A::f();
}
};
The use case I can think of off the top of my head is when there's a more-or-less reasonable default behavior, but the class designer wants that sort-of-default behavior be invoked only explicitly. It can also be the case what you want derived classes to always perform their own work but also be able to call a common set of functionality.
Note that even though it's permitted by the language, it's not something that I see commonly used (and the fact that it can be done seems to surprise most C++ programmers, even experienced ones).