Run-time casting error

[GBoyle]

I am writing a model economy in which corporations (class BCorp) and persons (class BPrsn) act as agents buying and selling goods and services. I have a pool of contacts (class BContact) in which contact information is retained about each contact between agents. In a contact object I store a pointer, which may be for a BCorp or a BPrsn, so I cast it as a (double*). When I need to access a pointer, I recast it as (BCorp*) or (BPrsn*) as appropriate.

However, at some point things get confused and the program ASSERTS(). When I use intellisense in debug mode I see the following happening:
- I declare a BCorp* and set it to null (intellisense says it is a null BCorp*);
- I access a pointer from a contact (a double*) and cast it to (BCorp*);
- The moment it is so cast, intellisense now says it is a (BPrsn*) pointer, and all of the contents at that pointer become nonsensical.

The line of code in which this happens looks like this:

CorpPtr = (BCorp*) ContactPtr->GetAgentDPtr();

Here is my question: WHAT WOULD CAUSE A CAST TO FAIL, AND ASSIGN A DIFFERENT CAST, AT RUN-TIME?

[NathanOliver]

Are you sure that ContactPtr is holding a BCorp and that it is getting cast right? Also why are you casting objects to a double * in you contact object.

[Narue]

>In a contact object I store a pointer, which may be for a BCorp or a BPrsn, so I cast it as a (double*).
I can't begin to fathom why you're using double* instead of void* for a safe transient pointer type. Could you explain your reasoning here?

[GBoyle]

I guess I use a (double*) because I don't know any better. I had no idea you can use a (void*) as a cast. Is it likely that changing it to (void*) would make this problem go away? Why would the compiler reinterpret a (BCorp*) cast as a (BPrsn*) cast when converting from a (double*) cast? Or, maybe, that doesn't matter. Why would using a (void*) cast avoid such problems? Nor have I seen the wording 'transient pointer'. I will research that. I will also try the (void*) option. I appreciate your response.

[Narue]

>I had no idea you can use a (void*) as a cast.
void* is the generic pointer type. You're pretty much guaranteed to be able to convert a pointer to and from void* without any problems. There's no such guarantee for any other arbitrary combination of pointer types. Performing a safe typecast is your first step in troubleshooting the problem.

>Nor have I seen the wording 'transient pointer'.
It's not official terminology. In fact, I made it up on the spot. ;)

[GBoyle]

I will try it and let you know the result tomorrow.

[GBoyle]

Thank you Oliver and Narue.

The problem has been fixed. The due to an error in logic the original pointer, which was (BPrsn*), was converted to (double*) as intended, but then converted to (BCorp*). On suggestion by Oliver, I dug into the code and discovered this. Evidently Intellisense tracked the original type, through two casts. I am mystified how it did this, but OK.

On the advice of Narue I have also changed my use of (double*) as a type for storing untyped pointer, and replaced it with (void*). I am unsure of the benefits of this, but if I am closer to standard practice, that would probably be a good thing.

Thanks for your help.

G Boyle