More to the point, they may not have a type which can be
expressed in C or C++. All you can really say is that the vptr points to some class specific meta information (called the vtable or vtbl) and that this meta information includes all the information necessary for virtual function calls, in fact, than just pointers to
functions. (The names, and the idea that the vtbl is just a table of pointers to functions, come from the earliest versions of CFront: before multiple inheritance the vtbl was just a table of pointers to functions, and CFront used C as its intermediate language, and in this generated C, the names were __vptr and __vtbl__classna me, or something like that.)
expressed in C or C++. All you can really say is that the vptr points to some class specific meta information (called the vtable or vtbl) and that this meta information includes all the information necessary for virtual function calls, in fact, than just pointers to
functions. (The names, and the idea that the vtbl is just a table of pointers to functions, come from the earliest versions of CFront: before multiple inheritance the vtbl was just a table of pointers to functions, and CFront used C as its intermediate language, and in this generated C, the names were __vptr and __vtbl__classna me, or something like that.)