Pure virtual destructor in template class

From:
Tonni Tielens <tonnitielens@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Tue, 18 Nov 2008 08:33:49 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID:
<109514dc-a700-4de9-9eb1-f1f5ec528da6@c22g2000prc.googlegroups.com>
I'm trying to create a pure virtual class describing an interface.
Normally, when I do this I make the destructor pure virtual so that,
even if there are no members in the class, it cannot be instantiated.

The difference now is that I'm making a generic interface with
template arguments. Template classes should be defined in the header
file, but it is not allowed for a destructor's definition to be in the
class definition if the destructor is pure virtual. Atleast not with
GCC -pedantic and I understand this is correct behavior. I'm unsure on
how to solve this. I know I don't really have to put a pure virtual
destructor in the class, but I think it's good practice so if it's
possible I would like to stick to this.

My code looks like the following:

template <typename TypeA, typename TypeB>
struct MyInterface
{
  virtual ~MyInterface() = 0;

  virtual void Foo(TypeA a, TypeB b) = 0;
};

I already found that I can resolve the compilation errors, by adding

template <typename TypeA, typename TypeB>
MyInterface<TypeA, TypeB>::~MyInterface() {}

in the same file after the class definition, but I'm not sure if this
is the common way to do this. Is there a correct way to do this or
should I leave the pure virtual destructor out?

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