C++ – C-Style upcast and downcast involving private inheritance

class A 
{
    public:
       int x;
    protected:
       int y;
    private:
       int z;
};

class B : public A
{
    // x is public
    // y is protected
    // z is not accessible from B
};

class C : protected A
{
    // x is protected
    // y is protected
    // z is not accessible from C
};

class D : private A    // 'private' is default for classes
{
    // x is private
    // y is private
    // z is not accessible from D
};

IMPORTANT NOTE: Classes B, C and D all contain the variables x, y and z. It is just question of access.

About usage of protected and private inheritance you could read here.

I don't think there's a way, either. The best I could achieve is so that the line that you want to generate a warning doesn't compile at all.

class Int
{
public:
    int value;
    Int(int v);
};

class Float
{
public:
    float value;
    Float(float v);
    operator int() { return static_cast<int>(value); }
};

int main()
{
    Float a = 5.5;
    //Int x = a; //no warning, simply doesn't compile
    Int y = (int)a;
    Int z = static_cast<int>(a);
}

Edit: regarding your question about Vector2

One thing to do might be to disable all implicit conversions between different Vector2 types. As a short-cut you might provide a vector_cast to allow explicit conversions:

template <class T, class S>
Vector2<T> vector_cast(const Vector2<S>& s)
{
    return Vector2<T>(static_cast<T>(s.x), static_cast<T>(s.y));
}

Another thing might be to bring in some template metaprogramming, to enable conversion constructor for safe conversions.

It seems to me that boost doesn't contain such a type_trait, hence I rolled my own.

It is somewhat simplified: Target must be at least as large as Source, and Target must not be integral if Source is floating point. However, it disregards issues of signedness, and the question whether a floating-point type can represent the full range of an integer type (e.g float cannot store all 32-bit ints precisely, but double can).

#include <boost/type_traits.hpp>
#include <boost/utility/enable_if.hpp>

template <class S, class T>
struct is_safe_conversion:
    boost::integral_constant<
        bool,
        (sizeof(S) <= sizeof(T)) && !(boost::is_floating_point<S>::value && boost::is_integral<T>::value)
    >
{
};

template<typename T> class Vector2
{
public:
    T x, y;
    Vector2():x(0),y(0){}
    Vector2(T x, T y):x(x),y(y){}

    template <class U>
    Vector2(const Vector2<U>& other, typename boost::enable_if<is_safe_conversion<U, T> >::type* = 0):
        x(other.x), y(other.y) {}

};

template <class T, class S>
Vector2<T> vector_cast(const Vector2<S>& s)
{
    return Vector2<T>(static_cast<T>(s.x), static_cast<T>(s.y));
}

int main()
{
    Vector2<double> vd, vd2;
    Vector2<int> vi, vi2;
    Vector2<float> vf, vf2;

    vd = vd2;
    vd = vi;
    vd = vf;

    //vi = vd; //error
    vi = vector_cast<int>(vd);
    vi = vi2;
    //vi = vf; //error
    vi = vector_cast<int>(vf); //explicit

    //vf = vd; //error
    vf = vector_cast<float>(vd);

    //following compiles, but produces a warning (float cannot represent all integers) 
    //TODO: enhance is_safe_conversion!
    vf = vi; 
    vf = vf2;
}