Finding the type of an object in C++

dynamic_cast should do the trick

TYPE& dynamic_cast<TYPE&> (object);
TYPE* dynamic_cast<TYPE*> (object);

The dynamic_cast keyword casts a datum from one pointer or reference type to another, performing a runtime check to ensure the validity of the cast.

If you attempt to cast to pointer to a type that is not a type of actual object, the result of the cast will be NULL. If you attempt to cast to reference to a type that is not a type of actual object, the cast will throw a bad_cast exception.

Make sure there is at least one virtual function in Base class to make dynamic_cast work.

Wikipedia topic Run-time type information

RTTI is available only for classes that are polymorphic, which means they have at least one virtual method. In practice, this is not a limitation because base classes must have a virtual destructor to allow objects of derived classes to perform proper cleanup if they are deleted from a base pointer.

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