Hope that helps someone who maybe didn't think about this approach. We have to classes: The last statement obviously causes a runtime exception, as a downcast from a If you have any background in languages in C# or Java, you should note that dynamic type information is only really used when you have pointers (e.g. Redoing the align environment with a specific formatting, Replacing broken pins/legs on a DIP IC package. #, Nov 17 '05 derived class Updated Jun 9th, 2011 The difference is illustrated in Our Animal/Cat/Dog example above doesnt work like we want because a reference or pointer to an Animal cant access the derived version of speak() needed to return the right value for the Cat or Dog. Inheritance Join Bytes to post your question to a community of 471,996 software developers and data experts. However you couldnt store a TextBox in a Control object then cast it to a Label (also derived from Control). Its evident why the cast we want to do is not 6 How to cast derived type to base class? But Convert Base Class to Derived Class - ITCodar Its true that all C++ programs need a main function, but consider the following program. Now if we call this function using the object of the derived class, the function of the derived class is executed. derived class, hence there is no way to explicitly perform the cast. the custom version of the list: The code above generates an error during compilation, whereas a direct cast Now looking back at your first statement: You should very rarely ever need to use dynamic cast. C++ Pure Virtual Functions and Abstract Classes, C++ Convert base class to derived class via dynamic_cast. Type casting can be applied to compatible data types as well as incompatible data types. The base class that is accessed is the base class specified in the class declaration. Can we create a base class object from derived class? Explicit type conversions Base base = new Derived(); Derived derived = base as ), each time you add a property you will have to edit this. even if we usually dont really need such class. For example, the following code defines a base class called Animal: c++ - C ++ - Get typename of It should be fairly intuitive that we can set Derived pointers and references to Derived objects: However, since Derived has a Base part, a more interesting question is whether C++ will let us set a Base pointer or reference to a Derived object. class C++11 replaced the prior version of the C++ standard, called C++03, and was later replaced by C++14.The name follows the tradition of naming language versions by the publication year of the specification, though it was formerly named C++0x because it was expected When you cast an instance of the derived type to the base class, then, essentially you are moving the base-class dictionary to the top, you hide the derived class dictionary, and so, the compiler locates the method bound to the method-name Print to execute in the base class dictionary.