Have you considered implementing your class as a template class that way you can handle all the specific data types you want to D&D at runtime and get a more accurate value to allocate to memory using the sizeof() operator. You might not know the type of the data being D&D so you might want to add the following header #include <typeinfo.h> to get the actually type of the data then call typeid(theObject).name(); I have not actually used this but i vague remember it being handy in such a case. corrections welcome. Or you could if else through all supported types and check for a not null with a dynamic cast then apply the sizeof on the successful cast ----- Original Message ----- | From: "James Nzomo" <kazikubwa@gmail.com> | To: "Skunkworks Mailing List" <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke> | Sent: Monday, November 28, 2011 1:01:49 PM | Subject: Re: [Skunkworks] Size of an object in memory at runtime | I'm using wxWidgets. It's clipboard mechanism extends the underlying | platform's clipboard mechanism. | The object is of a custom class. | This class contains various datatypes ranging from | ints,doubles,std::strings,char pointers to custom typedefs, structs | and other classes. | The objects i want to D&D are of different types. I will have a | clipboard data object for each type as opposed to having an abstract | implementation which is more complex. | _______________________________________________ | Good judgement comes from Experience. | Most of that comes from Bad Judgement. | _______________________________________________ | 2011/11/28 Josh Handley < josh@bridgeinternationalacademies.com > | _______________________________________________ | Skunkworks mailing list | Skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke