Create an inheritance hierarchy of Rodent Mouse Gerbil Hamst

Create an inheritance hierarchy of Rodent: Mouse, Gerbil, Hamster, etc. In the base class, provide methods that are common to all Rodents, and refine these in the derived classes to perform different behaviours depending on the specific type of Rodent. Rodent must be created as a pure abstract base class. Create an array of pointers (10) to Rodent, and fill it with different specific types of Rodents. Call your base class methods, and display the results. IN C++

Solution

Please find the required program below along with its output. Please see the comments against each line for description :

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

class Rodent { //abstract base class
protected:
int hands, legs; //properties
public:
void set_values (int a, int b) //setter method for properties
{ hands=a; legs=b; }
virtual int getLegCount (void) =0; //common method
};

class Mouse: public Rodent { //child class
public:
int getLegCount (void) //implenting common method
{ return (hands + legs); }
};

class Gerbil: public Rodent { //child class
public:
int getLegCount (void) //implenting common method
{ return (legs); }
};

int main () {
  
Mouse mouse1,mouse2,mouse3,mouse4,mouse5; //declaring child classes
Gerbil gerbil1,gerbil2,gerbil3,gerbil4,gerbil5;
  
Rodent * rodents[] = {&mouse1,&mouse2,&mouse3,&mouse4,&mouse5,&gerbil1,&gerbil2,&gerbil3,&gerbil4,&gerbil5}; //array of pointer of 10 rodents
  
cout << \"Leg counts : \" << endl; //print the result of common method
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
rodents[i]->set_values(2*(i+1),2*(i+1));
cout << rodents[i]->getLegCount() << \'\ \';
}
  
return 0;
}

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OUTPUT: