C++ is, first and foremost, an object-oriented language, and objects are the fundamental building blocks of a C++ program. Class hierarchies are used to express relationships and interactions between different parts of a software system, define and implement the interfaces between components, and organize data and code. While this isn't a book for teaching C++, the aim of this chapter is to give the reader enough knowledge about C++ language features as they relate to classes and inheritance, which will be used in later chapters. To that end, we don't attempt to completely describe the C++ tools for working with classes but introduce the concepts and language constructs that will be used throughout this book.
The following topics will be covered in this chapter:
- What are classes and what is their role in C++?
- What are class hierarchies and how does C++ use inheritance?
- What is runtime polymorphism and how is it used in C++?
