Ask the C++ Pro 10-Minute Solution(2)

Ask the C++ Pro 10-Minute Solution

Pointing to Class Members

I've received a lot of questions lately such as this about pointers to class methods: "I work with Visual C++ 4.0. I cannot use the pointer of a class method. The compilation error message is:

Cannot convert parameter 2 from 'long (unsigned long)'
to 'long (__cdecl *)(unsigned long)'

What should I do?"

Here is the code for one way to solve this problem.

//in the header
class CKernel:
{
   long (*lpFunc)(DWORD);
   long OLESendTC( DWORD dwInfo );
}

//in the cpp File
BOOL CKernel::Init()
{
   lpFunc = OLESendTC;
   return TRUE;
}

Class methods all have one hidden argument, a pointer to the class object the method is called on. C++ uses this pointer to find the location of any class data that the method may reference. If you try and use a standard function pointer to call a class method, C++ has no way to pass this hidden argument and a conflict results.

To help deal with this and to improve type safety, C++ added three new operators, ::*, .*, and ->*, to allow for safe pointers to members. These pointers to members can point to either member functions or variables.

class CTest
{
public:
	BOOL Init();
	long OLESendTC(DWORD dwInfo);
};

long (CTest::*lpFunc)(DWORD dwInfo) = &CTest::OLESendTC;

int main()
{
	CTest test;
	(test.*lpFunc)(0);
	return 0;
}

long CTest::OLESendTC(DWORD dwInfo)
{
	cout << "IN OLESENDTC/n";
	return 0;
}

This example shows one use of pointers to members. The code uses the ::* operator to declare lpFunc as a pointer to a CTest member function. Note that, rather than assign a value to this pointer at run time, the pointer is simply initialized in the declaration.

In the main function, this example uses the .* operator to call the method pointed to by lpFunc. If test were a pointer here, you would use the ->* operator instead.

C++ has a lot of things going on under the hood such as hidden arguments to methods. Pointers to members allow you to safely declare a pointer to a class method and call methods through that pointer.