Best Practice For List of Polymorphic Objects in C++

Question

What is a common practice for the storage of a list of base class pointers each of which can describe a polymorphic derived class?

To elaborate and in the interest o

Answer 1

I want the use of this system to be safe; I don't want a user to have undefined errors when he/she erroneously casts a base class pointer to the wrong derived type.

Why would you get undefined errors? The behavior of dynamic_cast is perfectly well-defined and catches the error if you cast a base class pointer to the wrong derived type. This really seems like reinventing the wheel.

Additionally I want as much as possible the work for copying/serializing this list to be taken care of automatically. The reason for this is, as a new derived type is added I don't want to have to search through many source files and make sure everything will be compatible.

I'm not sure what the problem is here. If all the derived classes are serializable and copyable, isn't that good enough? What more do you need?

I'm also not sure what to make of the first two requirements. What do you mean, the ABC should "enforce a common functionality"? And what is the point in having derived classes, if their role is only to perform that same common functionality, be copyable and serializable?

Why not just make one non-abstract class serializable and copyable then?

I'm probably missing something vital here, but I don't really think you've explained what it is you're trying to achieve.