Re: dynamic_cast expensive?

From:
cppquester <cppquester@googlemail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Sat, 24 Apr 2010 17:13:52 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<12b2bfb6-2f45-4c7c-a725-39725a4a1a4d@g23g2000yqn.googlegroups.com>
On 24 Apr., 21:25, Salt_Peter <pj_h...@yahoo.com> wrote:

On Apr 24, 12:16 pm, cppquester <cppques...@googlemail.com> wrote:

When I replaced the dynamic cast in the code excerpt below
(here each class knows it type), I gained a speedup of about factor
4(!)
(in release mode (-O2))

Why is a dynamic cast so expensive? I thought basically the RTTI
system basically does
what I did (store the type (implicitely) and then cast or return
NULL).

Or might this be specific to my platform (g++ 4.2.4)?

Thanks,
Marc

  thisType* lEnd=dynamic_cast<thisType*>(derived);
  if( lEnd == NULL)
    throw MyException("Type changed.");*/

  if( derived->Type() != this->type)
    throw MyException("Type changed.");
  thisType* lEnd=static_cast<thisType*>(derived);


Not enough info.
A class always knows its type, you don't need RTTI for that. In the
case where the object 'derived' above is of a type which is a
derivative of thisType, then derived will always be of type thisType.
So doing a dynamic cast is pointless, doing any cast is pointless.

So to answer your question: the question is irrelevant.

Btw, C++ programmers are reknown to be pathetic when it comes to
guessing. Try making a simple, short compileable example to explain
what you seek.

class thisType { };
class Derived : public thisType { };

int main()
{
  // do stuff

}


You are right, it was not clear.
Actually the following was meant:

class Base { virtual int Type(); ...};

class thisType: public Base { int t; int Type(){ return t;} ...};
class Derived : public Base { int t; int Type(){ return t;} ...};

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