I have recently learned about virtual functions and it is to my understanding that they are a keyword that goes in front of the return type when defining a function. They go in a base class, and make it so that if a member function of the base class is called with a base class type object, say b.display(), then the compiler will look in any derived classes for a definition of the function display() and if it fails to then just uses the base classes version of the function. This is what my textbook told me. However when I tested this out with this program it returned results that did not match my understanding. Here is the program:
Base_derived.h:

#include<iostream>
using namespace std;
class base
{
public:
	virtual int get_tag()
	{return 1;}
};
class derived: public base{
public:
	int get_tag()
	{return 2;}
};

main.cpp:

#include"derived.h"
#include<iostream>
using namespace std;
int main()
{

class derived d;
cout<<"d.get_tag():"<<d.get_tag()<<endl;
class base b;
cout<<"b.get_tag():"<<b.get_tag()<<endl;
system("pause");
return 0;
}

When the program ran it outputted:
"d.get_tag():2
b.get_tag():1"
I thought that b.get_tag() would return 2 because it is a virtual function. Thanks for any help.

Your example is not quite correct. You mean to do this:

base* pb = &d;
    cout << pb->get_tag() << endl;

Simply declaring a base object and calling a method on it will never invoke a method of a derived object since the base object knows nothing about the derived object. It doesn't even know if there are any derived objects!

Virtual functions used to call on private variables from another class(in my understanding)

so if you have:

class one {

public:
one();
virtual void getone() {return data;}

private:
int data;

};

class two : public one {

public:
two();
virtual void getone() {return data;}
};

you would be able to access class one's variable data from class two.

SeeTheLite: You're either thinking of protected or friend, but not virtual.

While friend classes are similar, they also allow the manipulation of private variables from an inherited class, which is why virtual functions are used, for access.

Try this change and see , if you yet can't underestood the difference yet. and why we are using it.

#include"derived.h"
#include<iostream>
using namespace std;
int main()
{

class derived d;
cout<<"d.get_tag():"<<d.get_tag()<<endl;
class base& b= d;
cout<<"b.get_tag():"<<b.get_tag()<<endl;
system("pause");
return 0;
}

SeeTheLite: You are simply wrong here. Virtual functions are not used "for access" like friend functions; there is no similarity at all. Virtual functions are the basis of true object-oriented (as opposed to object-based) programming, so if you're confused here, you really need to study up.

SeeTheLite: I still can't make sense of your subtle concept. Can you give a (runnable) example of using a virtual function to access a base class's private data from a derived class?

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