Objects of different classes in a single vector?

Question

In my code, I have a set of objects:

class Sphere { ...
class Plane { ...
...

And I need to use a collection of them (they will all have di

Answer 1

The classes would need to have a common base class, e.g.:

class MyBase { };
class Sphere : public MyBase { };
class Plane : public MyBase { };

Then in order to store polymorphic objects in a vector, you must store a pointer to them (because they can be different sizes from the base class). I recommend using a std::shared_ptr or std::unique_ptr (or use Boost if C++0x isn't available).

std::vector > v;
v.push_back(new Sphere());
v.push_back(new Plane());

If there is no common base, you'd have to use void*, or find a different way to do this.