Using std::shared_ptr<void> to point to anything
c++, c++11, shared-ptr, smart-pointers, stl
Solution
This is not good practice. If you don't store additional type information next to your `std::shared_ptr` (which you can cast using `static_pointer_cast`) you have undefined behaviour all around. Maybe Boost.Any is an option for you?
If you want to stick with `std::shared_ptr<void>` please remember to provide a custom deleter function (see make shared_ptr not use delete).
Problem
I'm using a `std::shared_ptr<void>` in my application to make a smart pointer which can point to many different types of data structures like structs, vectors, matrices... basically anything. What I'm trying to do is map some names to their data structures. I'm performing the mapping using a hashtable: `std::unordered_map<std::string, std::shared_ptr<void>>` Can I cast the `std::shared_ptr<void>` returned by `find()` back to `std::shared_ptr<my_type>`? If so, how? More importantly, is this good practice? Will this increase the complexity too much as the application scales? Or, is there some other completely different, elegant approach? EDIT Probably cannot use `Boost.Any' since it uses RTTI. Also cannot use a base class for all these data structures, since some of them are STL containers like `std::vector`. About the `shared_ptr` delete issue discussed on an answer below, I read that shared_ptr performs type erasure and does store type information to know which destructor to call. Shared void pointers. Why does this work? Why do std::shared_ptr<void> work Why is shared_ptr<void> not specialized? But I'm not sure about this.