...since I consider that a comparatively safe convenience feature.
Of course we *do perform* a NULL check and throw an exception.
So now the actual casting or conversion functions are designed
to work always on the same level of references or pointers,
which means we can just use the standard conversions of the
language. This has the nice effect of ruling out dangerous
combinations (like taking a L-ref from a R-ref) automatically
(extracted from the git history of file try.cpp, May 2008)
basically this is the draft implementation from which
AccessCasted was extracted. I see two problems
- this version prints from within the access functions
- we do not want the automatic static downcast anymore.
meanwhile, I consider this kind of "do everything for me"
programming style as dangerous. If unchecked donwcasts
are desired, then code them up explicitly
