I know your probally whining for a reason but thats one of the few things where I think c++ took the logical choice, if you could call virtual functions from in the constructor then you might call a virtual function from a base class which acesses the members of a derived class before they are initialized so its "cant call them" or "potentially undefined behaviour if you call them", I know which I prefer ;).

Of course it's logical. The only way to get around it would be to force the compilers to basically do two-phase construction transparently (i.e. init the vtable first and then call the normal constructors) which introduces all kinds of nasty problems of its own, and violates the well-known C++ design policy of "you don't pay for what you don't use."

The problem is it ruins a few designs that would otherwise be very elegant, especially when it comes to building classes in the RAII style. Of course, one could make a very good argument that anyone looking for ease of elegant design should steer well clear of C++ in the first place.

ok then, I guess if you really need it you could get the same effect by passing a member function pointer to the class constructor and hide it from users by setting it to a default value, its a bit of extra work since you have to pass the new pointer to the base class in each derived class constructor but its better then nothing.