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How to Pass a Polymorphic Object to an STL Algorithm

by Jonathan Boccara

From the article:

As we can read in the opening chapter of Effective C++, C++ is a federation of 4 languages:

• the procedural part coming from C,
• the object-oriented part,
• the STL part (following a functional programming paradigm),
• the generic part with templates.

And what’s more, all of those 4 sub-languages are part of one whole: the C++ language. Those 4 paradigms begin united in one language gives opportunities for them to interact – and often, those interactions create interesting situations.

Today we’re focusing on one particular interaction, between the object-oriented model and the STL. There could be multiple forms for this interaction, and the case we will look at is how to pass a polymorphic (that is, having virtual methods) function object to an STL algorithm.