Make interchangeable class types via pointer casting only, without having to allocate any new objects?

Question

UPDATE: I do appreciate \"don\'t want that, want this instead\" suggestions. They are useful, especially when provided in context of the motivating scenari

Answer 1

I believe the strict aliasing rules forbid what you are trying to do.

To clarify: strict aliasing has nothing to do with layout compatibility, POD types or what not. It has to do with optimization. And with what the language explicitly forbids you to do.

This paper sums it up rather well: http://dbp-consulting.com/StrictAliasing.pdf