C++ How to Program, 10/e

Summary

Section 12.1 Introduction

• Polymorphism (p. 532) enables us to write programs that process objects of classes that are part of the same class hierarchy as if they were all objects of the hierarchy’s base class.

• With polymorphism, we can design and implement systems that are easily extensible—new classes can be added with little or no modification to the general portions of the program. The only parts of a program that must be altered to accommodate new classes are those that require direct knowledge of the new classes that you add to the hierarchy.

Section 12.2 Introduction to Polymorphism: Polymorphic Video Game

• With polymorphism, one function call can cause different actions to occur, depending on the type of the object on which ...