dynamic_cast not throwing exceptions as expected

Question

Based on this answer...

Finding the type of an object in C++

...I wrote this code:

        static TVALUE getUpperBou         


        

Answer 1

You are casting to a pointer. bad_cast is only generated when casting to a reference.

You can just check for nullptr if casting to a reference isn't desirable.

Answer 2

dynamic_cast only throws exceptions on failure if its template argument is a reference type.
When it's a pointer type, dynamic_cast instead evaluates to NULL on failure.

This is made very clear in the preferred language reference, for which you could simply have Googled:

5c) Otherwise, the runtime check fails. If the dynamic_cast is used on pointers, the null pointer value of type _new_type_ is returned. If it was used on references, the exception std::bad_cast is thrown.

I also don't understand why you expect an int to be thrown, rather than something that derives std::exception. Perhaps you were hoping that return in a try block jumps to the matching catch block? It doesn't.