++ creators introduced Runtime Type Information (RTTI) more than a decade ago. Yet even today many programmers arent fully aware of its benefits and perils. In the following sections, I will show when and how you should use RTTI.
Object-oriented pundits claim that with a proper design and judicious use of virtual member function, you won't need to use RTTI. However, under certain conditions, for example, when using heterogeneous containers and root-based class hierarchies (MFC for example), dynamic type detection is sometimes unavoidable. How can you detect an objects dynamic type?
Use the built-in RTTI operators typeid and dynamic_cast.
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