Fixing C++ Multiple Inheritance Ambiguous Call

larrylampco picture larrylampco · Aug 10, 2013 · Viewed 17.2k times · Source

I have three classes structured like this:

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

class Keyword
{
    public:
        virtual float GetValue() = 0;
};

class CharacterKeyword : public Keyword
{
    public:
        virtual float GetValue(){return _value;}
    private:
        float _value;
};

class MeasurementKeyword : public Keyword
{
    public:
        virtual float GetValue(){return _value;}
    private:
        float _value;
};

class AddressType : public CharacterKeyword, public MeasurementKeyword
{

    private:
        float address;
        float addresExt;
};

int main()
{
    AddressType *a = new AddressType();
    a->GetValue();
    return 0;
}

I am getting the following:

In function ‘int main()’:
error: request for member ‘GetValue’ is ambiguous
error: candidates are: virtual float Keyword::GetValue()
error: virtual float MeasurementKeyword::GetValue()
error: virtual float CharacterKeyword::GetValue()

I have done some reading into multiple inheritance and I know that it has a lot of pitfalls - this being one of them. I need my class structure to be like this so I was wondering if there was a way that I could fix this using templates?

Update
After reading your comments, my original thought was that maybe I can just delineate between an AddressType that is a CharacterKeyword and an AddressType that is a MeasurementKeyword by templating the AddressType. And using it as such in the updated code. OR I can just specify the namespace of the member that I would like. Since the templated way has not been mentioned yet as an answer, is it a bad fix? Should I just specify the namespace of the member I want?

template <class T>
class AddressType : public T
{

    private:
        float address;
        float addresExt;
};

int main()
{
    AddressType<MeasurementKeyword> *a = new AddressType<MeasurementKeyword>();
    a->GetValue();
    return 0;
}

Answer

aaronman picture aaronman · Aug 10, 2013

This is because of a diamond inheritance pattern, to resolve the error you can specify the specific namespace you want the member from like.

paddressType->MeasurementKeyword::GetValue()

or

paddressType->CharacterKeyword::GetValue()  

  1. Basically your AddressType class has access to the GetValue members from both the classes it inherits from and can't choose one (call is ambiguous).
  2. The scope resolution operator (:: ) helps specify which one you actually want.
  3. You haven't said what you actually want this code to do so I'll just say that generally complex inheritance patterns are not conducive to creating readable code, rethink what you actually want.