How do I cast a parent class as the child class

Question

It\'s been a while since I have had to write C++ code and I\'m feeling kind of stupid. I\'ve written code that is similar to, but is not exactly, the code b

Answer 1

A Parent object returned by value cannot possibly contain any Child information. You have to work with pointers, preferably smart pointers, so you don't have to clean up after yourself:

#include 

class Factory
{
    // ...

public:

    static std::unique_ptr GetThing()
    {
        return std::make_unique();
    }
};

int main()
{
    std::unique_ptr p = Factory::GetThing();
    if (Child* c = dynamic_cast(p.get()))
    {
        // do Child specific stuff
    }
}