first of all, i want to say that i have ALREADY SEARCHED on it ... i want to discuss only one thing with you people.
here is the link that i used to get more related to this topic.
http://www.geekinterview.com/question_details/3478
My question is
Does structure have "this" pointer in it?
Last edited by Ken Fitlike; 01-11-2007 at 08:47 AM. Reason: removed unnecessary code tags enclosing link
structure and class in C++ differ only in 1 thing:
all members of the class are private by default
all members of the struct are public by default
there is no other difference
All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection,
except for the problem of too many layers of indirection.
– David J. Wheeler
there is another difference.
one is named struct and the other is named class
funny wont be my middle name for a long time
> Does structure have "this" pointer in it?
Structures and classes don't have 'this' pointers.
It is the member functions of the struct / class that have 'this' pointers.
As vart says, a struct can have a member function just the same way a class can.
If you dance barefoot on the broken glass of undefined behaviour, you've got to expect the occasional cut.
If at first you don't succeed, try writing your phone number on the exam paper.
About that, if C had structures which are the same as classes than C could also be Object Oriented?
C structures are different from C++ structuresOriginally Posted by indigo0086
All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection,
except for the problem of too many layers of indirection.
– David J. Wheeler
OO is a programming paradigm which has nothing to do with the language you use. you can code OO in C perfectly, its just that languages designed with OO in mind give you more expressiveness to code OO in. Think ctors/dtors, keywords/symbols for inheritance keywords for data hiding etc
Oh I see. I always thought of OO as more of a language feature which kind of encapsulates a larger idea.
It's actually the other way round. OO is a methodology based on a "larger idea" and that methodology can be used in any programming language. Some languages just include specific features that make it easier to apply the methodology directly.
That's what i was looking for.
So you mean, structs don't have this pointer however member functions of structs have this pointer .. emm cool, but if someone ask me to prove it how could i? it will be really help full if you put some code over here.
Actually i had the discussion with my friend and argued with these points that you people have posted here, but he said structs has this pointer, i was not sure and i keep silent ... however, i argue that if struct has this pointer then it should allow "inheritence", "polymorphism" which structs don't.
One more difference could be. The objects of structs are much like a new custom data type, so they are created on stack and the of class objects are created on heap. so if there is a very big struct then it could be possible that it could make the stack overflow, however heap is managed by the OS and allow paging/defregmentation which makes LARGER classes to be in the program without any problem. what you say?
Just tell them to read the language standard. It's in 9 §4:
That's all there is ever said specifically about structs in the C++ standard. They're otherwise identical to classes.A structure is a class defined with the class-key struct; its members
and base classes are public by default.
He means the right thing, but puts it the wrong way. Neither classes nor structs have a this pointer. It's the non-static member functions of both that have it.Actually i had the discussion with my friend and argued with these points that you people have posted here, but he said structs has this pointer, i was not sure and i keep silent ...
Yes, they do. And it's "inheritance".however, i argue that if struct has this pointer then it should allow "inheritence", "polymorphism" which structs don't.
That's how it works in C#, but in C++ it's complete nonsense.One more difference could be. The objects of structs are much like a new custom data type, so they are created on stack and the of class objects are created on heap. so if there is a very big struct then it could be possible that it could make the stack overflow, however heap is managed by the OS and allow paging/defregmentation which makes LARGER classes to be in the program without any problem. what you say?
All the buzzt!
CornedBee
"There is not now, nor has there ever been, nor will there ever be, any programming language in which it is the least bit difficult to write bad code."
- Flon's Law
> however, i argue that if struct has this pointer then it should allow "inheritence", "polymorphism" which structs don't.
You're confusing 'this' (which is an invisible pointer to an instance of a struct/class, as received by a member function of that struct/class) with other hidden data inside the struct/class to manage things like inheritance and polymorphism.
> but if someone ask me to prove it how could i?
Does this help?
Just adding member functions to a struct/class doesn't add 'this' to the stored data.Code:#include <iostream> struct foo { int a; }; struct bar { int a; bar ( void ) { a = 0; } }; int main ( ) { foo v1; bar v2; std::cout << sizeof v1 << std::endl; std::cout << sizeof v2 << std::endl; return 0; } $ ./a.exe 4 4
Some info on OO in C, with varying degrees of features in terms of programmer comfort.
http://ldeniau.home.cern.ch/ldeniau/html/oopc/oopc.html
http://www.accu.org/acornsig/public/articles/oop_c.html
http://www.eventhelix.com/RealtimeMa...mming_in_c.htm
http://ootips.org/oop-in-c.html
http://www.bolthole.com/OO-C-programming.html
http://ficl.sourceforge.net/oo_in_c.html
http://sunsite.uakom.sk/sunworldonli...ol-10-ooc.html
If you dance barefoot on the broken glass of undefined behaviour, you've got to expect the occasional cut.
If at first you don't succeed, try writing your phone number on the exam paper.
As a matter of fact, discussion of the "this" pointer is in Section 9.3.1 of the C++ standard, the first paragraph of which says;
and a note at the start of the second para of Section 9.4.1 says this (which is what I suspect CornedBee was referring to).In the body of a nonstatic (9.3) member function, the keyword this is a non lvalue expression whose value is the address of the object for which the function is called. The type of this in a member function of a class X is X*. If the member function is declared const, the type of this is const X*, if the member function is declared volatile, the type of this is volatile X*, and if the member function is declared const volatile, the type of this is const volatile X*.
One simple way to demonstrate that a struct does not have a "this" pointer is this code;[Note: a static member function does not have a this pointer (9.3.2). ]
which will not compile because this is not a member of x.Code:struct X { // whatever members you like }; int main() { X x; X *p = x.this; }
