I want a vector of derived class pointers as base class pointers

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There is a copy constructor for a std::vector but it requires you to copy the exact same type of vector. Fortunately, there is another constructor which takes a pair of iterators and adds all the elements in the range, so you can do this:

vector<Animal*> animals(dogs.begin(),dogs.end());

This creates a new vector of Animal pointers by iterating through each Dog pointer. Each Dog pointer is converted to an Animal pointer as it goes.

Here is a more complete example (using C++11):

#include <vector>

struct Animal { };

struct Dog : Animal { };

struct Cat : Animal { };

struct Bird : Animal { };

int main(int,char**)
{
  Dog dog1, dog2;
  Cat cat1, cat2;
  Bird bird1, bird2;
  std::vector<Dog *> dogs = {&dog1,&dog2};
  std::vector<Cat *> cats = {&cat1,&cat2};
  std::vector<Bird *> birds = {&bird1,&bird2};
  std::vector<std::vector<Animal *>> all_animals = {
    {dogs.begin(),dogs.end()},
    {cats.begin(),cats.end()},
    {birds.begin(),birds.end()}
  };
}

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