Is it ok to dynamic cast "this" as a return value?

Posted by Panayiotis Karabassis on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Panayiotis Karabassis
Published on 2012-07-02T21:05:42Z Indexed on 2012/07/02 21:15 UTC
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This is more of a design question.

I have a template class, and I want to add extra methods to it depending on the template type. To practice the DRY principle, I have come up with this pattern (definitions intentionally omitted):

template <class T>
class BaseVector: public boost::array<T, 3>
{
protected:
    BaseVector<T>(const T x, const T y, const T z);
public:
    bool operator == (const Vector<T> &other) const;
    Vector<T> operator + (const Vector<T> &other) const;    
    Vector<T> operator - (const Vector<T> &other) const;
    Vector<T> &operator += (const Vector<T> &other)
    {
        (*this)[0] += other[0];
        (*this)[1] += other[1];
        (*this)[2] += other[2];

        return *dynamic_cast<Vector<T> * const>(this);
    }
}

template <class T>
class Vector : public BaseVector<T>
{
public:
    Vector<T>(const T x, const T y, const T z)
    : BaseVector<T>(x, y, z)
    {
    }
};

template <>
class Vector<double> : public BaseVector<double>
{
public:
    Vector<double>(const double x, const double y, const double z);
    Vector<double>(const Vector<int> &other);
    double norm() const;
};

I intend BaseVector to be nothing more than an implementation detail. This works, but I am concerned about operator+=. My question is: is the dynamic cast of the this pointer a code smell? Is there a better way to achieve what I am trying to do (avoid code duplication, and unnecessary casts in the user code)? Or am I safe since, the BaseVector constructor is private?

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