Hello, I had created an interface to abstract a part of the source for a later extension. But what if I want to extend the derived classes with some special methods? So I have the interface here:

class virtualFoo

{ public: virtual ~virtualFoo() { }

virtual void create() = 0;
virtual void initialize() = 0;

};

and one derived class with an extra method:

class concreteFoo : public virtualFoo

{ public: concreteFoo() { } ~concreteFoo() { }

virtual void create() { }
virtual void initialize() { }

void ownMethod() { }

};

So I try to create an Instance of concreteFoo and try to call ownMethod like this:

void main()

{ virtualFoo* ptr = new concreteFoo(); concreteFoo* ptr2 = dynamic_cast(ptr);

if(NULL != ptr2)
    ptr2->ownMethod();

}

It works but is not really the elegant way. If I would try to use ptr->ownMethod(); directly the compiler complains that this method is not part of virtualFoo. Is there a chance to do this without using dynamic_cast?

Thanks in advance!