In Java, IIRC, the cast fails with a ClassCastException. That seems to me to be ... | Hacker News

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AnimalMuppet on Aug 5, 2014 | parent | context | favorite | on: What is type safety?

In Java, IIRC, the cast fails with a ClassCastException. That seems to me to be "failure is reflected at runtime".

In C++ with RTTI, IIRC it returns null. That's also "failure at runtime" (of a sort), but you have to check it.

jeorgun on Aug 5, 2014 [–]

RTTI returns nullptr when casting a pointer, but it does throw an exception when casting references. Both of these behaviors are well-defined, although the first is kind of questionable.

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