Homework 2: Virtual Realities

Homework 2:
Virtual Realities

Overview
In this homework, you will explore the dynamic dispatch mechanism of virtual functions in object-oriented
languages. We will hand-build a vtable for a group of classes in the C language, and show how the compiler
uses a vtable to select a derived function to call at run time based on the type of the value it is called on.
Function Pointers
C and C++ allow programmers to declare variables that point to functions rather than values. When such
a pointer is dereferenced, the actual function that it points to is called, using arguments supplied by the
programmer. C and C++ do type checking of function pointers to make sure the right number and types of
arguments are provided at compile time. Example:
int max(int a, int b) { return a >= b ? a : b; } // return the larger integer
// in main():
int (*pFunc)(int, int); // pFunc is a pointer to a function that takes 2 int arguments
// and returns int
pFunc = max; // pFunc now points to the real function max
printf(%d, pFunc(5, 10)); // dereference pFunc, use its return value
In F#, we say that a function taking two integers and returning integer has type int->int->int. In C, we
say it has type int (*)(int, int). (As if we replaced the name of the function with (*), removed the
parameter names, and left everything else the same.)
Like all pointers, we do not necessarily know at compile time what a function pointer actually points to, so
the actual function to be executed will not be known until run-time. We can use this with some trickery to
implement function calls that execute dierent function bodies depending on run-time values.
Faking Objects and Polymorphism
We will implement this lab in C, which means we do not have access to objects... but we can fake it with
structs. After all, a struct is a class without member functions, inheritance, or polymorphism... but it can
store a pointer to a vtable, and through this we will implement polymorphism and dynamic dispatch.
Consider the following C++ code showing the polymorphism feature we want to emulate:
class Employee {
int age;
public:
int GetAge() { return age; }
virtual void Speak() = 0;
virtual double GetPay() = 0;
};
class HourlyEmployee : public Employee {
double hourly_rate;
double hours;
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public:
virtual void Speak() { cout << I work for  << hourly_rate <<  dollars per hour :(;
};
class CommissionEmployee : public Employee {
double sales_amount;
public:
virtual void Speak() { cout << I make commision on  << sales_amount <<  dollars in sales!;
};
// in main()
Employee *e = ... // suppose e points to either a CommissionEmployee or HourlyEmployee.
cout << e->GetPay(); // which function gets called? Who knows!
We can emulate this in C using:
1. A struct Employee, with two member elds: a pointer to vtable (as a void**); and an integer eld
age.
2. A struct HourlyEmployee, with four member elds: the same elds as Employee, and doubles
hourly_rate and hours.
3. A struct CommissionEmployee, likewise, but with a double sales_amount.
4. Global functions to emulate each of the member functions of the objects:
(a) Speak_Hourly which takes an Employee pointer, casts it to a HourlyEmployee pointer, and prints
the employee's message;
(b) GetPay_Hourly which also takes an Employee pointer and returns the employee's total pay (see
below);
(c) Construct_Hourly which takes a HourlyEmployee pointer and initializes its elds to their default
values, most importantly initializing the objects's vtable pointer (more on this below).
and then following some tedious steps to create variables of our types and call the appropriate functions:
1. To make a HourlyEmployee, declare a HourlyEmployee variable (either on the stack or with malloc)
and then pass it by pointer to Construct_Hourly.
2. To use subtype polymorphism to point an Employee at a HourlyEmployee, declare an Employee
pointer and initialize it by casting your HourlyEmployee's address to an Employee pointer.
3. To use dynamic dispatch, dereference the Employee pointer's vtable pointer, index the table to the
appropriate method, cast that pointer to the correct function pointer type, and invoke the method by
passing the Employee pointer and any other necessary parameters. Easy!
Vtables
A vtable (short for virtual table) is a table of function pointers, with one entry in the table for each
virtual function in a class (or its ancestors). Since the Employee class has two virtual functions, the vtable
for any Employee-derived object will have two pointers in it for Speak and GetCost, plus additional entries
for any more virtual functions introduced by the derived class. C++ handles the creation and use of vtables
automatically; in this lab, we will simulate the work that a C++ compiler performs to transform virtual
method calls into vtable lookups.
Suppose we have two functions: void Speak_Hourly(struct HourlyEmployee*) and double GetPay_Hourly(struct
HourlyEmployee*). We can build a table (really an array) of two pointers to functions as such:
void* Vtable_Hourly[2] = {Speak_Hourly, GetPay_Hourly};
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The void* type in C lets us create a pointer to anything, but the compiler won't help us use such a pointer;
we will need to cast it to something specic in order to use it. Suppose we have a struct HourlyEmployee
h variable that we want to call Speak_Hourly on, but we don't want to use Speak_Hourly directly  instead,
we want to use Vtable_Hourly. We note that the rst entry in Vtable_Hourly is a pointer to Speak_Hourly,
and thus try to use that pointer to call the function it points to:
Vtable_Hourly[0]((struct HourlyEmployee *)&h);
This makes sense in our head: the element 0 of Vtable_Hourlyis a pointer to Speak_Hourly, which wants
a single parameter of type struct Employee *. Unfortunately C sees Vtable_Hourly[0] as a pointer to
void, not to a function; we have to tell the compiler that it actually points to a function that returns void
and takes a single parameter of type struct Employee *. A cast will accomplish this task:
((void (*)(struct Employee*))Vtable_Hourly[0])((struct Employee *)&h);1
which tells the compiler to invoke the function pointed to by Vtable_Hourly[0], passing it the address of
h as its parameter. Success!
All we need to do now is add a new member variable to our structs: a void** pointer to a vtable appropriate
to the class. Create one vtable variable globally for all derived Employee types, point the vtable pointers to
the appropriate global tables in constructor methods, and voila! We can now call a virtual function through
a base class pointer by accessing the appropriate index from the vtable associated with the variable and
invoking that function by hand.
Program
Implement the following code:
1. Create Employee, HourlyEmployee, and CommissionEmployee structs as described above. The rst
member of each struct should be a void** vtable variable.
2. Implement the Speak_Hourly and Speak_Commission functions for the HourlyEmployee and CommissionEmployee
structs as global functions.
3. Add HourlyEmployee and CommissionEmployee implementations of a GetPay function, which takes
an Employee pointer and returns a double as such:
(a) The pay for an hourly employee is the number of hours multiplied by their hourly rate.
(b) The pay for a commission employee is 10% of their total sales, plus 40,000.
4. Create a Vtable_XX global array for each employee derived type, initialized with pointers to the
appropriate Speak and GetPay functions for that type, in that order.
5. Implement Construct_XX functions for HouryEmployee and CommissionEmployee, which initialize the
member variables to 0 values, and most importantly, sets the employee's vtable pointer to the appropriate global Vtable_XX variable. (Don't overthink this. It's as easy as writing parameter->vtable
= Vtable_Hourly;, for example.)
6. Add a new class SeniorSalesman, which derives from CommissionEmployee by duplicating all of
CommissionEmployee's member variables. SeniorSalesman will override the GetPay method but will
use CommissionEmployee's version of Speak. Create a vtable and constructor for the SeniorSalesman
class, and a GetPay method that returns 20% of the salesman's sales, plus 50,000, plus another 5% of
sales if the employee is at least 40 years old.
Then write a main program that does the following:
1. Declare an Employee pointer.
2. Ask the user to choose either an hourly employee, a commission employee, or a senior salesman.
3. Use malloc to create space for the appropriate employee, for example, HourlyEmployee *h = (HourlyEmployee*)mallo1We know that we're working with function pointers in C when our code starts to look like line noise.
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(a) Ask the user how old the employee is.
(b) If the user selects an hourly, ask them for the employee's pay rate and hours.
(c) If the user selects a commission or a senior salesman, ask for the employee's amount of sales.
(d) Use your Construct_ function to initialize the memory given back from malloc, passing the
appropriate parameters for the type selected.
(e) Point your Employee to the variable.
(f) Past this point of the program, you can have no code referring to CommissionEmployee, HourlyEmployee, or SeniorSalesman explicitly  everything must be through
Employee pointers.
4. Tell the Employee to speak, then inform the user how much money they make.
(a) To do this, you will access the vtable pointer from the Employee pointer in your main, index
it to the appropriate position for each function, cast that pointer as described above, and invoke
the function it is pointing to.
Deliverables
Turn in the following when the lab is due:
Turn in the following when the lab is due:
1. Your source code le(s).
2. A printed copy of the output of your program, where you choose:
(a) an hourly employee 25 years old making $9.50 an hour working 90 hours.
(b) a commission employee 30 years old with $80,000 in sales.
(c) a senior salesman 50 years old with $100,000 in sales.
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