Pure virtual method called

Question

I understand why calling a virtual function from a constructor is bad, but I'm not sure why defining a destructor would result in a "pure virtual method called" exception. The code uses const values to reduce the use of dynamic allocation - possibly also the culprit.

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

class ActionBase {
 public:
    ~ActionBase() { } // Comment out and works as expected

    virtual void invoke() const = 0;
};

template <class T>
class Action : public ActionBase {
 public:
    Action( T& target, void (T::*action)())
     : _target( target ), _action( action ) { }

    virtual void invoke() const {
        if (_action) (_target.*_action)();
    }

    T&   _target;
    void (T::*_action)();
};

class View {
 public:
    void foo() { cout << "here" << endl; }
};

class Button : public View {
 public:
    Button( const ActionBase& action )
     : _action( action ) { }

    virtual void mouseDown() {
        _action.invoke();
    }

 private:
    const ActionBase& _action;
};

int main( int argc, char* argv[] )
{
    View view;
    Button button = Button( Action<View>( view, &View::foo ) );
    button.mouseDown();

    return 0;
}

Answer 1

You have Undefined Behavior. As the parameter to Button's ctor is a const& from a temporary, it is destroyed at the end of that line, right after the ctor finishes. You later use _action, after Action's dtor has already run. Since this is UB, the implementation is allowed to let anything happen , and apparently your implementation happens to do something slightly different depending on whether you have a trivial dtor in ActionBase or not. You get the "pure virtual called" message because the implementation is providing behavior for calling ActionBase::invoke directly, which is what happens when the implementation changes the object's vtable pointer in Action's dtor.

I recommend using boost.function or a similar 'action callback' library (boost has signals and signals2 , for example).

Answer 2

Set a breakpoint on the destructor and it will become clear what is happening. Yup, you are passing a temporary instance of Action<> to the Button constructor. It is destroyed after the button construct runs. Write it like this and the problem disappears:

View view;
Action<View> event(view, &View::foo);
Button button = Button( event ); 
button.mouseDown();

Well, that's not a practical solution, event is not going to be in scope for a real mouseDown invocation. The Button constructor is going to have to create a copy of the "event" argument or it is going to have to manage a pointer to the delegate.

Answer 3

A class with virtual functions should always have a virtual destructor, so ~ActionBase() should be virtual, (and so should ~Action() ). If you turn on more compiler warning you will get a warning about this.

Essentially, because of the lookup rules, the destructor is called for a type that the compiler knows cannot be instantiated (pure virtual), so it knows something must have gone wrong.

I'm sure someone else can explain better than I can :)