Editing Dynamic dispatch (section)

====C++ implementation====
C++ uses early binding and offers both dynamic and static dispatch. The default form of dispatch is static. To get dynamic dispatch the programmer must declare a method as {{mono|virtual}}.

C++ compilers typically implement dynamic dispatch with a data structure called a [[virtual method table|virtual function table]] (vtable) that defines the name-to-implementation mapping for a given class as a set of member function pointers. This is purely an implementation detail, as the C++ specification does not mention vtables. Instances of that type will then store a pointer to this table as part of their instance data, complicating scenarios when [[multiple inheritance]] is used. Since C++ does not support late binding, the virtual table in a C++ object cannot be modified at runtime, which limits the potential set of dispatch targets to a finite set chosen at compile time.

Type overloading does not produce dynamic dispatch in C++ as the language considers the types of the message parameters part of the formal message name. This means that the message name the programmer sees is not the formal name used for binding.