In "Bjarne Stroustrup, The C++ programming language (german translation)"
I found an example, which looks like this:

struct base {
  base *next;
  static base *list;

  base() {next = list; list = this};

  virtual void function() = 0;
  // ...
};

class derived : public base {
  // ...
public:
  void function();
  // ...
};


Two questions:

1)  Does function() in class derived really override function() in base?
    Does the declaration in derived really say that function is not pure
    virtual and not virtual at all? I get a linker error-message, when I
    use such a construction without defining the overriding function, but
    neither a compiler error nor a warning. Is this correct?

2)  What happens, when the very first object is created with a class
    derived from base? The constructor of base assignes list to next, but
    list is not yet initialized; so rubbish may be assigned to next. Is
    there no need to initialize list first, e.g. base *base::list = 0; some-
    where outside of base? I get a compiler error, if I don't do it.

Thanks in advance for any help,

Rainer Fischer.
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