I have a std::map containing pointers to a class called cEntity. These pointers are always passed as pointers, to avoid object slicing. However, I have a method called getItem(std::string s), that returns a pointer to the cEntity associated with the string s.
cEntity has a few classes derived from it, such as the player class - cPlayer. When a pointer to a cPlayer is returned, it is sliced - leaving only a cEntity class. Is this the language telling me to be a better programmer, or is there a solution?
Side note: If people from my previous posts see this, I did take your advice - and I am only using two managers now.
[source lang="cpp"]cEntity* cEntityManager::getItem(std::string s) {
std::map<std::string, cEntity*>::iterator itr;
itr = entityList.find(s);
return itr->second;
}[/source]
Polymorphism Issues
If you know the type you should be able to use dynamic_cast on it, like this:
cPlayer *player = dynamic_cast<cPlayer*>(cEntityManager::getItem("Player"));
Author
Thanks, that is working nicely.
Out of curiosity, more than anything else, is there a way of designing my class heirachy so that the function can return any derived class pointer, and not slice it?
Out of curiosity, more than anything else, is there a way of designing my class heirachy so that the function can return any derived class pointer, and not slice it?
It isn't sliced, but if you tell C++ to return you a cEntity pointer that is what the compiler will interprete it as, in memory however it is still a cPlayer object. And any virtual function you you call on this cEntity object will actually execute the cPlayer version if you overrode them in cPlayer.
Try this in a debugger, take the address of the cEntity that is returned when your request the player object and stick it in a memory window. You will see that the fields beyond the cEntity ones are set to values of your cPlayer object.
Try this in a debugger, take the address of the cEntity that is returned when your request the player object and stick it in a memory window. You will see that the fields beyond the cEntity ones are set to values of your cPlayer object.
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