Downcasting is the term used in C++ for casting a pointer or reference to a base class to a derived class. This should usually be checked with an embedded dynamic typing scheme if such a scheme is not present in the language, such as with a typecase (Modula-3) or inspect (Simula) construct. In C++, it is even possible to use conversion functions to perform some checks, although the proposed RTTI will perform checked downcasting as its primary ability.
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