Curiosity on covariant return type (C++)

2 Jul 2003

      Hi,

just curious,
when I tried this trick on function returning referenceg++ failed. Also,
when I searched in Google, all examples use functions that return a
pointer.

class Base {
    virtual Base& getRef() const = 0;
    virtual Base* getPtr() const = 0;
}

class Derived : public Base{
    virtual Derived& getRef() const;    //This one does not work.
    virtual Derived* getPtr() const;
}

Perhaps someone knows the exact definition (standard/ISO) of this -- is
reference allowed or only pointer allowed?

TIA.

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