upcasting

Can I do this? class A { ... }; class B : private A { const A &foo() const { return *((const A *)this); } }; Can I take a subclass that inherits privately from a base class and cast it to a public version of its base class? Can I do this without it having virtual methods? My guess is yes, but I wanted to make sure it's safe / portable. Yes you can: §5.4/7 of the standard: ... the following static_cast and reinterpret_cast operations (optionally followed by a const_cast operation) may be performed using the cast notation of explicit type conversion, even if the base class type is not accessible

I am new to C# (and OOP ). When I have some code like the following: class Employee { // some code } class Manager : Employee { //some code } Question 1 : If I have other code that does this: Manager mgr = new Manager(); Employee emp = (Employee)mgr; Here Employee is a Manager , but when I cast it like that to an Employee it means I am upcasting it? Question 2 : When I have several Employee class objects and some but not all of them are Manager 's, how can I downcast them where possible? RCIX That is correct. When you do that you are casting it it into an employee object, so that means you

I am asking a quite simple question, but I am bit confused in this. Suppose I have a class Parent : public class Parent { int name; } And have another class Child.java : public class Child extends Parent{ int salary; } And finally my Main.java class public class Main { public static void main(String[] args) { Parent parent = new Child(); parent.name= "abcd"; } } If I make a child object like Child child = new Child(): Then child object can access both name and salary variables. My question is: Parent parent = new Child(); gives the access of only name variable of Parent class. So what is the