C++ – Virtual tables are undefined

cdesign-patternslinkervtable

I wrote some code but I am unable to compile it:

#include <cstdio>
#include <vector>

using namespace std;

class Visitor;

class Land {
  public:
    virtual void accept(const Visitor *v);
};

class England : public Land {
  public:
    void accept(const Visitor *v);
};

class Russia : public Land {
  public:
    void accept(const Visitor *v);
};

class Visitor {
  public:
    void visit(const England *e) const;
    void visit(const Russia *r) const;
};

class Trip {
  private:
    vector<Land> *l;
  public:
    explicit Trip(vector<Land> *_l);
    void accept(Visitor *v);
};

/**/

void Visitor::visit(const England *e) const {
  printf("Hey, it's England!\n");
}

void Visitor::visit(const Russia *r) const {
  printf("Hey, it's Russia!\n");
}

void Russia::accept(const Visitor *v) {
  v->visit(this);
}

void England::accept(const Visitor *v) {
  v->visit(this);
}

Trip::Trip(vector<Land> *_l):l(_l) {}

void Trip::accept(Visitor *v) {
  for (unsigned i = 0; i < l->size(); i++) {
    l->at(i).accept(v);
  }
}

int main() {
  England england;
  Russia russia;
  vector<Land> trip_plan;
  trip_plan.push_back(england);
  trip_plan.push_back(russia);
  trip_plan.push_back(england);
  Trip my_trip(&trip_plan);
  Visitor me;
  my_trip.accept(&me);
  return 0;
}

This is what I got from g++:

c++ -ansi -Wall -Wextra -Wconversion -pedantic -Wno-unused-parameter  -o vp vp.cc
/tmp/ccNanCPR.o: In function `Land::Land()':
vp.cc:(.text._ZN4LandC2Ev[Land::Land()]+0xf): undefined reference to `vtable for Land'
/tmp/ccNanCPR.o: In function `Land::Land(Land const&)':
vp.cc:(.text._ZN4LandC1ERKS_[Land::Land(Land const&)]+0x13): undefined reference to `vtable for Land'
/tmp/ccNanCPR.o: In function `Land::~Land()':
vp.cc:(.text._ZN4LandD1Ev[Land::~Land()]+0xf): undefined reference to `vtable for Land'
/tmp/ccNanCPR.o:(.rodata._ZTI6Russia[typeinfo for Russia]+0x10): undefined reference to `typeinfo for Land'
/tmp/ccNanCPR.o:(.rodata._ZTI7England[typeinfo for England]+0x10): undefined reference to `typeinfo for Land'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

This question is based on Circular dependencies of declarations

Best Answer

I already answered it there. The rules for vtable instantiation are explained in your compiler documentation.

Here, it is waiting to see the definition (body) of Land::accept, which you declared to be a non-pure virtual, but never defined. Either define it, or make it pure virtual.

Model-View-Presenter

In MVP, the Presenter contains the UI business logic for the View. All invocations from the View delegate directly to the Presenter. The Presenter is also decoupled directly from the View and talks to it through an interface. This is to allow mocking of the View in a unit test. One common attribute of MVP is that there has to be a lot of two-way dispatching. For example, when someone clicks the "Save" button, the event handler delegates to the Presenter's "OnSave" method. Once the save is completed, the Presenter will then call back the View through its interface so that the View can display that the save has completed.

MVP tends to be a very natural pattern for achieving separated presentation in WebForms. The reason is that the View is always created first by the ASP.NET runtime. You can find out more about both variants.

Two primary variations

Passive View: The View is as dumb as possible and contains almost zero logic. A Presenter is a middle man that talks to the View and the Model. The View and Model are completely shielded from one another. The Model may raise events, but the Presenter subscribes to them for updating the View. In Passive View there is no direct data binding, instead, the View exposes setter properties that the Presenter uses to set the data. All state is managed in the Presenter and not the View.

Pro: maximum testability surface; clean separation of the View and Model
Con: more work (for example all the setter properties) as you are doing all the data binding yourself.

Supervising Controller: The Presenter handles user gestures. The View binds to the Model directly through data binding. In this case, it's the Presenter's job to pass off the Model to the View so that it can bind to it. The Presenter will also contain logic for gestures like pressing a button, navigation, etc.

Pro: by leveraging data binding the amount of code is reduced.
Con: there's a less testable surface (because of data binding), and there's less encapsulation in the View since it talks directly to the Model.

Model-View-Controller

In the MVC, the Controller is responsible for determining which View to display in response to any action including when the application loads. This differs from MVP where actions route through the View to the Presenter. In MVC, every action in the View correlates with a call to a Controller along with an action. In the web, each action involves a call to a URL on the other side of which there is a Controller who responds. Once that Controller has completed its processing, it will return the correct View. The sequence continues in that manner throughout the life of the application:

    Action in the View
        -> Call to Controller
        -> Controller Logic
        -> Controller returns the View.

One other big difference about MVC is that the View does not directly bind to the Model. The view simply renders and is completely stateless. In implementations of MVC, the View usually will not have any logic in the code behind. This is contrary to MVP where it is absolutely necessary because, if the View does not delegate to the Presenter, it will never get called.

Presentation Model

One other pattern to look at is the Presentation Model pattern. In this pattern, there is no Presenter. Instead, the View binds directly to a Presentation Model. The Presentation Model is a Model crafted specifically for the View. This means this Model can expose properties that one would never put on a domain model as it would be a violation of separation-of-concerns. In this case, the Presentation Model binds to the domain model and may subscribe to events coming from that Model. The View then subscribes to events coming from the Presentation Model and updates itself accordingly. The Presentation Model can expose commands which the view uses for invoking actions. The advantage of this approach is that you can essentially remove the code-behind altogether as the PM completely encapsulates all of the behavior for the view. This pattern is a very strong candidate for use in WPF applications and is also called Model-View-ViewModel.

There is a MSDN article about the Presentation Model and a section in the Composite Application Guidance for WPF (former Prism) about Separated Presentation Patterns

C++ – What are the differences between a pointer variable and a reference variable in C++

A pointer can be re-assigned:

int x = 5;
int y = 6;
int *p;
p = &x;
p = &y;
*p = 10;
assert(x == 5);
assert(y == 10);

A reference cannot be re-bound, and must be bound at initialization:

int x = 5;
int y = 6;
int &q; // error
int &r = x;

A pointer variable has its own identity: a distinct, visible memory address that can be taken with the unary & operator and a certain amount of space that can be measured with the sizeof operator. Using those operators on a reference returns a value corresponding to whatever the reference is bound to; the reference’s own address and size are invisible. Since the reference assumes the identity of the original variable in this way, it is convenient to think of a reference as another name for the same variable.
```
int x = 0;
int &r = x;
int *p = &x;
int *p2 = &r;

assert(p == p2); // &x == &r
assert(&p != &p2);
```

You can have arbitrarily nested pointers to pointers offering extra levels of indirection. References only offer one level of indirection.

int x = 0;
int y = 0;
int *p = &x;
int *q = &y;
int **pp = &p;

**pp = 2;
pp = &q; // *pp is now q
**pp = 4;

assert(y == 4);
assert(x == 2);

A pointer can be assigned nullptr, whereas a reference must be bound to an existing object. If you try hard enough, you can bind a reference to nullptr, but this is undefined and will not behave consistently.

/* the code below is undefined; your compiler may optimise it
 * differently, emit warnings, or outright refuse to compile it */

int &r = *static_cast<int *>(nullptr);

// prints "null" under GCC 10
std::cout
    << (&r != nullptr
        ? "not null" : "null")
    << std::endl;

bool f(int &r) { return &r != nullptr; }

// prints "not null" under GCC 10
std::cout
    << (f(*static_cast<int *>(nullptr))
        ? "not null" : "null")
    << std::endl;

You can, however, have a reference to a pointer whose value is nullptr.

Pointers can iterate over an array; you can use ++ to go to the next item that a pointer is pointing to, and + 4 to go to the 5th element. This is no matter what size the object is that the pointer points to.
A pointer needs to be dereferenced with * to access the memory location it points to, whereas a reference can be used directly. A pointer to a class/struct uses -> to access its members whereas a reference uses a ..
References cannot be put into an array, whereas pointers can be (Mentioned by user @litb)
Const references can be bound to temporaries. Pointers cannot (not without some indirection):
```
const int &x = int(12); // legal C++
int *y = &int(12); // illegal to take the address of a temporary.
```
This makes const & more convenient to use in argument lists and so forth.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

What are MVP and MVC and what is the difference

Model-View-Presenter

Two primary variations

Model-View-Controller

Presentation Model

C++ – What are the differences between a pointer variable and a reference variable in C++

Related Topic