Re: casting a void* into 2 base classes

From:
hswerdfe <hswerdfe@example.com>
Newsgroups:
microsoft.public.vc.language
Date:
Fri, 08 Sep 2006 10:41:36 -0400
Message-ID:
<edrvf4$2j0$1@nrc-news.nrc.ca>
Ulrich Eckhardt wrote:

hswerdfe wrote:

I have a wrapper object that returns a void*

Like So:
void* tmpVoid = myWrapper.GetObject();

The void* that it returns is one of 2 classes.
neither one has a base class.

how do I find out what class it is?


You can't. If there was a common baseclass with virtual functions, you might
be able to cast to that and then use RTTI (dynamic_cast).

and how do I cast it once I do?


static_cast

the solution I am thinking of now is bad I think.
that is to store the class name in the wrapper object.

CString className = myWrapper.GetClassName();

and then use that and do an old C Style Cast

CBase1* myBase1;
CBase2* myBase2;
if (className.Compare("CBase1") == 0)
    myBase1 = (CBase1*)tmpVoid;
else if (className.Compare("myBase2") == 0)
    myBase2= (myBase2*)tmpVoid;


For your own sake, please forget about the C style casts, these only serve
to hide errors. Also, are you aware that CString has overloaded
equality-comparison operators? You could have written

  if(className == "CBase1")
     ...

which is generally considered much friendlier to read.

Now, concerning the design, you could as well return the type_id of each
possible class - this won't cost you any additional string storage. See the
typeid() operator in your C++ documentation.

Uli


Thanks, this helps a lot,
but I have issues storing the type_info

my Wrapper Class doesn't actually know what it is storing it just holds
a void*

I tried passing in the the type_info
of the base class
CWrap* = myWrapper = new CWrap(myBase1 , typeid(myBase1));

and storing the type_info in a member function
class CWrap
{
     type_info& m_typeInfo;
}

But from my documentation, and compile errors (VC++6)
it looks like the copy constructor for type_info and assigment operator
are both declared private.

How do I store the type_info, from typeid()? if I can't make one, or
copy it? and from what I understand I can't get the Info from the void*.
cause this info is lost when you cast it to the void*.

Thanks again

How.

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