Determining size of an overloaded C++ class

Question

Using the sizeof operator, I can determine the size of any type – but how can I dynamically determine the size of a polymorphic class at runtime? For example, I have a pointer to an Animal, and I want to get the size of the actual object it points to, which will be different if it is a Cat or a Dog. Is there a simple way to do this, short of creating a virtual method Animal::size and overloading it to return the sizeof of each specific type?

Answer 1

If you know the set of possible types, you can use RTTI to find out the dynamic type by doing dynamic_cast. If you don't, this won't work.

Answer 2

Or you can use typeid, which might be faster than dynamic_cast (also with dynamic_cast you can cast to intermediary types in the hierarchy).

It looks rather bad:

#include <iostream>
#include <typeinfo>

class Creature
{
    char x[4];
public:
    virtual ~Creature() {}
};

class Animal: public Creature { char x[8];};

class Bird: public Creature { char x[16]; };

class Dog: public Animal { char x[32]; };

class Cat: public Animal { char x[64]; };

class Parrot: public Bird { char x[128]; };

unsigned creature_size(const Creature& cr)
{
    if (typeid(cr) == typeid(Animal)) {
        return sizeof (Animal);
    }
    else if (typeid(cr) == typeid(Dog)) {
        return sizeof(Dog);
    }
    else if (typeid(cr) == typeid(Cat)) {
        return sizeof(Cat);
    }
    else if (typeid(cr) == typeid(Bird)) {
        return sizeof(Bird);
    }
    else if (typeid(cr) == typeid(Parrot)) {
        return sizeof(Parrot);
    }
    else if (typeid(cr) == typeid(Creature)){
        return sizeof(Creature);
    }
    assert(false && "creature_size not implemented for this type");
    return 0;
}

int main()
{
    std::cout << creature_size(Creature()) << '\n'
    << creature_size(Animal()) << '\n'
    << creature_size(Bird()) << '\n'
    << creature_size(Dog()) << '\n'
    << creature_size(Cat()) << '\n'
    << creature_size(Parrot()) << '\n' ;
}

For each new type you'll need to add code to the creature_size function. With a virtual size function you'll need to implement this function in each class as well. However, this function will be significantly simpler (perfectly copy-n-pasteable, which shows there might be both a limitation in the language and a problem with your code design):

virtual unsigned size() const { return sizeof(*this); }

And you can make it abstract in the base class which means that it will be a compiler error if you forget to override this method.

Edit: this is naturally assuming that given any Creature you want to know its size. If you have a strong reason to believe that you are dealing with a Dog - or a subclass of Dog (and you don't care if it is a subclass), then naturally you can use dynamic_cast for an ad hoc test.

Answer 3

I can't believe that somebody's invented type_id() instead of implementing proper traits ....