Container that stores a mixture of base and derived objects?

Question

What is the right thing to do? I know that if the container is of base class value type, then derived object stored is \'sliced\'. If container is of derived class type, the

Answer 1

The most obvious solution would be to use std::unique_ptr:

class IBase {};
class Derived : virtual public IBase {};
std::vector> v;
v.push_back(std::unique_ptr(new Derived())); 

You could use std::shared_ptr, but it's ownership semantics significantly change the program's behaviour, keeping the dynamically allocated objects alive alive until nobody holds references to them.