I want to know the runtime type of a base class pointer, I know you can use dynamic_cast. is there any better way?
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I want to know the runtime type of a base class pointer, I know you can use dynamic_cast. is there any better way?
dynamic_cast will only confirm your guess, and even that is not perfect. If C inherits from B which inherits from A,
dynamic_cast<B*>((A*)&theC)will work.typeidwill give you the actual type, but in a way that’s not quite useful for anything. You can’t create new objects of that same type, for instance.So, the biq question that remains is what your real goal is. In proper OO design, you should never need to know about the unbounded set of types that can be derived from a base type.