Can I cast std::vector<Animal*> to std::vector<Dog*> without looking at each element?

Question

I have a base class with several classes extending it. I have some generic library utilities that creates a vector containing pointers to the base class so that any of the subclasses will work. How can I cast all of the elements of the vector to a specific child class?

// A method is called that assumes that a vector containing
// Dogs casted to Animal is passed.
void myDogCallback(vector<Animal*> &animals) {
    // I want to cast all of the elements of animals to
    // be dogs.
    vector<Dog*> dogs = castAsDogs(animals);
}

My naive solution would look something like this:

// A method is called that assumes that a vector containing
// Dogs casted to Animal is passed.
void myDogCallback(vector<Animal*> &animals) {
    // I want to cast all of the elements of animals to
    // be dogs.
    vector<Dog*> dogs;
    vector<Animal*>::iterator iter;
    for ( iter = animals.begin(); iter != animals.end(); ++iter ) {
        dogs.push_back(dynamic_cast<Dog*>(*iter));
    }
}

Answer 1

You could use std::transform. It still uses for() internally, but you'll get two-string implementation:

#include <vector>
#include <algorithm>
using namespace std;

struct Animal { virtual ~Animal() {} };
struct Dog : Animal { virtual ~Dog() {} };

template<typename Target>
struct Animal2Target { Target* operator ()( Animal* value ) const { return dynamic_cast<Target*>(value); } };

void myDogCallback(vector<Animal*> &animals) {
{
    vector<Dog*> dogs;
    transform( animals.begin(), animals.end(), dogs.begin(), Animal2Target<Dog>() );
}