Multiple Inheritance from two derived classes

Solution 1:

It looks like you want to do virtual inheritance. Whether that turns out to actually be a good idea is another question, but here's how you do it:

class AbsBase {...};
class AbsInit: public virtual AbsBase {...};
class AbsWork: public virtual AbsBase {...};
class NotAbsTotal: public AbsInit, public AbsWork {...};

Basically, the default, non-virtual multiple inheritance will include a copy of each base class in the derived class, and includes all their methods. This is why you have two copies of AbsBase -- and the reason your method use is ambiguous is both sets of methods are loaded, so C++ has no way to know which copy to access!

Virtual inheritance condenses all references to a virtual base class into one datastructure. This should make the methods from the base class unambiguous again. However, note: if there is additional data in the two intermediate classes, there may be some small additional runtime overhead, to enable the code to find the shared virtual base class.

Solution 2:

You need to to declare the inheritance as virtual:

struct AbsBase {
          virtual void init() = 0;
          virtual void work() = 0;
};

struct AbsInit : virtual public AbsBase {
          void init() {  }
};

struct AbsWork : virtual public AbsBase {
          void work() { }
};

struct NotAbsTotal : virtual public AbsInit, virtual public AbsWork {
};

void f(NotAbsTotal *p)
{
        p->init();
}

NotAbsTotal x;

Solution 3:

It can be done, although it gives most the shivers.

You need to use "virtual inheritance", the syntax for which is something like

class AbsInit: public virtual AbsBase {...};
class AbsWork: public virtual AbsBase {...};
class NotAbsTotal: public AbsInit, public AbsWork {...};

Then you have to specify which function you want to use:

NotAbsTotal::work()
{
    AbsInit::work_impl();
}

(UPDATED with correct syntax)