How to determine actual object type at runtime in C++;

Question

Lets say we have a class hierarchy. At the bottom we have Base and at the top Derived. How to determine object class even if it is converted to base class pointer.

Answer 1

make sure the base class has at least one virtual method, include and use your current code just with an additional dereferencing, typeid(*b).name().

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in passing, note that a typeid call is the one place in C++ where you can dereference a nullpointer with well-defined behavior, which implies that it can throw an exception:

C++11 §5.2.8/2:
“If the glvalue expression is obtained by applying the unary * operator to a pointer and the pointer is a null pointer value (4.10), the typeid expression throws the std::bad_typeid exception (18.7.3).”