C++ pointer multi-inheritance fun

Question

I\'m writing some code involving inheritance from a basic ref-counting pointer class; and some intricacies of C++ popped up. I\'ve reduced it as follows:

Suppose I h

Answer 1

C embeds an A and a B.

class C: public A, public B {};

is very similar to the C code

struct C {
    A self_a;
    B self_b;
};

and (B*) &c; is equivalent to static_cast< B* >( &c ) is similar to &c.self_b if you were using straight C.

In general, you can't rely on pointers to different types being interchangeable or comparable.