What is Object Slicing in C++ ?

Object slicing: when a derived class object is assigned to a base class object. only base class data will be copied from derived class and derived data will be sliced or ignored. This will occur in C++ , if you try to use call by value. see the sample code in c++.

Object slice prevention:

• Object slicing can be prevented by making the base class pure virtual, so that base instance will not be allowed.
• object slicing can't be occurred, if pointers or reference to the objects used, as both pointers of the same size

class base{

public:
int a;
base(){
a = 10;
}
};
class derive: public base
{
public:
int b;
derive()
{
b=20;
}
};

int main()
{
base b;
derive d;
cout< < "size of base class is "< < sizeof(b)< < endl;
cout< < "size of derive class is  "< < sizeof(d)< < endl;
b=d;
cout< < "size of b class is "< < sizeof(b)< < endl;
}

Output:
size of base class is 4
size of derive class is 8
size of b class is 4


From the above sample code, contents of the base class are one int data type and where as for derived class are two int data types. so size of the derived class is more than the base class. and in the example, derived instance is assigned to base instance, so base instance only takes the base contents and it will slice or ignore the extra int data type in derived class.
From the output, the size of the base object is four and size of the derived object is eight. we can observe that even after assigning the derived object to the base object, the size of the base object is four only. it sliced the extra four bytes from the derived object.