Discussion

Pointers serve two purposes at the same time: that of monikers (small identifiers of objects), and that of array iterators (they can walk through arrays of objects using pointer arithmetic). As monikers, it makes a lot of sense to treat a pointer to Derived as a pointer to Base. As soon as the array iteration part enters the stage, however, such substitutability breaks down because an array of Derived isn't the same as an array of Base. To illustrate: Mice and elephants are both mammals, but that doesn't mean a convoy of a thousand elephants would be as long as one of a thousand mice.

Size does matter. When substituting a pointer to Derived to a pointer to Base, the compiler knows exactly how to adjust the pointer (if necessary) because it has enough information about both classes. However, when doing pointer arithmetic on a pointer p to Base, the compiler computes p[n] as *(p + n * sizeof(Base)), thus assuming that the objects lying in memory are all Base objectsand not objects of some derived type that might have a different size. Imagine, now, just how easy it is to tromp all over of an array of Derived if you convert the pointer marking its start to Base* (with compiler's silent approval) and then perform pointer arithmetic on that pointer (while the compiler doesn't blink an eye either)!

Such accidents are an unfortunate interaction between substitutability, which dictates that pointers to derived classes should be usable as pointers to their bases, and C's legacy pointer arithmetic, which assumes pointers are monomorphic and uses solely static information to compute strides.

To store arrays of polymorphic objects, you need an array (or, better still, a real container; see Item 77) of pointers to the base class (e.g., plain pointers or, better still, shared_ptrs; see Item 79). Then each pointer in the array refers to a polymorphic object, likely an object allocated on the free store. Or, if you want to expose an interface to a container of polymorphic objects, you need to encapsulate the entire array and offer a polymorphic interface for iteration.

Incidentally, a good reason to prefer references to pointers in interfaces is to make it clear that you're talking about one object, as opposed to possibly an array of them.