static_cast caution
It is likely to lead unexpected behavior and maybe dangerous to invoke static_cast
on wrong C++ object. Below example demostrates it.
On the second invocation of foo
, foo(d2)
, the instance of class D2
is casted into instance of class D1
and the memory address for access to member variable b
of D1
is calculated as d2's address + offset of b
. The resulted address is actually out of the available memory of instance d2
because d2
is instance of class D2
which is smaller than class D1
(D1 has a big member variable arr
). That causeses unexpected behavior: if the memory which the address points is already allocated to the current process, the wrong data(the memory is occupied by another objects or values) are read; otherwise a "memory access violation" exception occurs.
#include <iostream>
#include <array>
using namespace std;
class Base
{
public:
virtual void say()
{
cout << "hello, base;" << endl;
}
};
class D1 : public Base
{
public:
char a = '*';
std::array<char, 10000> arr{};
char b = '+';
public:
void say() override
{
cout << "hello, D1;" << a << endl;
}
void jump()
{
cout << "jump " << b << endl;
}
};
class D2 : public Base
{
public:
long long v = 7777;
public:
void say() override
{
cout << "hello, D2;" << v << endl;
}
};
void foo(Base & bb);
int main()
{
D1 d1;
D2 d2;
foo(d1);
foo(d2); // cause memory access violation!!!
}
void foo(Base& bb)
{
D1& d = static_cast<D1&>(bb);
d.jump();
}
In my experiment, the "memory access violation" exception happens.