title: C++ polymorphism, function calls
body: <p>Okay, I'm pretty inexperienced as a programmer, let alone in C++, so bear with me here. What I wanted to do was to have a container class hold a parent class pointer and then use polymorphism to store a child class object. The thing is that I want to call one of the child class's functions through the parent class pointer. Here's a sort of example of what I mean in code:</p>
  
  <pre><code>class SuperClass
  {
  public:
      int x;
  }
  
  class SubClass : public SuperClass
  {
  public:
      void function1()
      {
          x += 1;
      }
  }
  
  class Container
  {
  public:
      SuperClass * alpha;
      Container(SuperClass&amp; beta)
      {
          alpha = beta;
      }
  }
  
  int main()
  {
      Container cont = new Container(new SubClass);
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>(I'm not sure that's right, I'm still really shaky on pointers. I hope it gets the point across, at least.)</p>
  
  <p>So, I'm not entirely sure whether I can do this or not. I have a sneaking suspicion the answer is no, but I want to be sure. If someone has another way to accomplish this sort of thing, I'd be glad to hear it.</p>