Testing inheritance

Arek the Absolute · 2002-07-19T06:45:09

Quick question, say I have these three classes: class CFish{ }; class CHerring : public CFish{ }; class CBillSmith : public CFish{ }; I didn''t give any of them any members, but just assume they''re there for the moment. I had a hard enough time coming up with the class names, so I''m not going to try coming up with variable or function names. Anyway, if I have somewhere in my code: CFish *fish = &some_object; /* some_class is a pointer to either a CHerring or a CBillSmith */ Is there some way I can tell from that fish pointer whether it is in fact a CHerring or a CBillSmith? Or am I going to have to just have a variable within CFish that will keep track of what class it actually is? Just don''t want to waste variables unless necessary, ''cause I''m funny like that. Thanks a bunch! -Arek the Absolute