To understand exactly what’s going on when you use a virtual function, it’s helpful to visualize the activities going on behind the curtain. Here’s a drawing of the array of pointers A[ ] in Instrument4.cpp:

The array of Instrument pointers has no specific type information; they each point to an object of type Instrument. Wind, Percussion, Stringed, and Brass all fit into this category because they are derived from Instrument (and thus have the same interface as Instrument, and can respond to the same messages), so their addresses can also be placed into the array. However, the compiler doesn’t know that they are anything more than Instrument objects, so left to its own devices it would normally call the base-class versions of all the functions. But in this case, all those functions have been declared with the virtual keyword, so something different happens.

Each time you create a class that contains virtual functions, or you derive from a class that contains virtual functions, the compiler creates a unique VTABLE for that class, seen on the right of the diagram. In that table it places the addresses of all the functions that are declared virtual in this class or in the base class. If you don’t override a function that was declared virtual in the base class, the compiler uses the address of the base-class version in the derived class. (You can see this in the adjust entry in the Brass VTABLE.) Then it places the VPTR (discovered in Sizes.cpp) into the class. There is only one VPTR for each object when using simple inheritance like this. The VPTR must be initialized to point to the starting address of the appropriate VTABLE. (This happens in the constructor, which you’ll see later in more detail.)

Once the VPTR is initialized to the proper VTABLE, the object in effect “knows” what type it is. But this self-knowledge is worthless unless it is used at the point a virtual function is called.

When you call a virtual function through a base class address (the situation when the compiler doesn’t have all the information necessary to perform early binding), something special happens. Instead of performing a typical function call, which is simply an assembly-language CALL to a particular address, the compiler generates different code to perform the function call. Here’s what a call to adjust( ) for a Brass object looks like, if made through an Instrument pointer (An Instrument reference produces the same result):

The compiler begins with the Instrument pointer, which points to the starting address of the object. All Instrument objects or objects derived from Instrument have their VPTR in the same place (often at the beginning of the object), so the compiler can pick the VPTR out of the object. The VPTR points to the starting address of the VTABLE. All the VTABLE function addresses are laid out in the same order, regardless of the specific type of the object. play( ) is first, what( ) is second, and adjust( ) is third. The compiler knows that regardless of the specific object type, the adjust( ) function is at the location VPTR+2. Thus, instead of saying, “Call the function at the absolute location Instrument::adjust” (early binding; the wrong action), it generates code that says, in effect, “Call the function at VPTR+2.” Because the fetching of the VPTR and the determination of the actual function address occur at runtime, you get the desired late binding. You send a message to the object, and the object figures out what to do with it.