So you can safely do this on the receivers end. If the current Type represents a constructed generic type, the base type reflects the generic arguments. The Java/C++ Cross Reference Handbook | Semantic Scholar First of all, your initialize function should probably marked virtual in your base class and override in your derived classes. Here's a complete example (credit to How to make a chain of function decorators?). Email: If the current Type represents a type parameter of a generic type definition, BaseType returns the class constraint, that is, the class the type parameter must inherit. Don't tell someone to read the manual. Webboostis_base_of ( class class ). What will happen when a base class pointer is used to delete the derived object? Using Kolmogorov complexity to measure difficulty of problems? but this doesn't work (as ahmed mentioned it throws null reference exception). A base class is an existing class from which the other classes are derived and inherit the methods and properties. To correct this situation, the base class should be defined with a virtual destructor. Example Other options would basically come out to automate the copying of properties from the base to the derived instance, e.g. In our problem, MyBaseClass is List and MyDerivedClass is MyCollection, so we are trying to cast an instance of a base class to an instance of a derived class. C++ Pure Virtual Functions and Abstract Classes, C++ Convert base class to derived class via dynamic_cast. So, it is a great way to distinguish different types of pointer like above. When a class is derived from a base class it gets access to: WebA protected data field or a protected function in a base class can be accessed by name in its derived classes. class Base {}; class Derived : public Base {}; int main(int argc, char** argv) { std::shared_ptr