I could be all wrong here, but your question (to me) reads like the definitions of polymorphism. That is to say you want an A structure but you wand to mash it into a B object. Isn't that how you exploit Inheritance Polymorphism?

In otherwords It seems to me that even though it

. . .somehow feels wrong

your 2nd options is the correct one. But my opinion is not from practice on such a problem as yet.

coreolyn Duct tape devotee.
-- That's OO perl, NOT uh-oh perl !-)

In reply to Re: OO-style question by coreolyn
in thread OO-style question by Ovid

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