In this chapter you’ll:

• See how polymorphism makes programming more convenient and systems more extensible.

• Understand the relationships among objects in an inheritance hierarchy.

• Use C++11’s overrides keyword when overriding a base-class virtual function in a derived class.

• Use C++11’s default keyword to autogenerate a virtual destructor.

• Use C++11’s final keyword to indicate that a base-class virtual function cannot be overridden.

• Create an inheritance hierarchy with both abstract and concrete classes.

• Determine an object’s type at runtime using runtime type information (RTTI), dynamic_cast, typeid and type_info.

• Understand how C++ can implement virtual functions and dynamic binding.

• Use virtual destructors to ensure that all appropriate destructors run on an object.