Re: Inheritance and offsetof

From:
James Kanze <james.kanze@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Wed, 23 Sep 2009 01:06:12 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<6b35e833-9adf-4715-b850-8218935fb1e1@31g2000vbf.googlegroups.com>
On Sep 22, 11:05 pm, "Francesco S. Carta" <entul...@gmail.com> wrote:

On 22 Set, 23:03, James Kanze <james.ka...@gmail.com> wrote:


    [...]

No. The only thing a C-style cast can do that static_cast
or reinterpret_cast (combined with const_cast) can't is cast
to a private base class.


Uh... black magic... but, wait: GCC 3.4.5 allows me
reinterpret_cast- ing a derived class to all of its base
classes, even to private ones... is that a bug?


No. But it's not doing what you think---reinterpret_cast
doesn't cast up and down in a hierarchy; it tells the compiler
that the actual pointer you have points to some different type.

To get an idea of what I mean, try the following:

    #include <iostream>

    struct A { int a ; } ;
    struct B { int b ; } ;
    struct C : A, B { int c ; } ;

    int
    main()
    {
        C obj ;
        obj.a = 1 ;
        obj.b = 2 ;
        obj.c = 3 ;
        C* pc = &obj ;
        B* pb1 = static_cast< B* >( pc ) ;
        B* pb2 = reinterpret_cast< B* >( pc ) ;
        std::cout << "using static_cast: " << pb1 << " (" << pb1->b <<
")\n" ;
        std::cout << "using reinterpret_cast: " << pb2 << " (" << pb2-

b << ")\n" ;

    }

At least on my system, seems that I really don't need C-style
casts at all, I think I won't upgrade it very soon ;-)


You generally don't need C-style casts. Or reinterpret_cast
either, for that matter.

--
James Kanze

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