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A null pointer has a value reserved for indicating that the pointer does not refer to a valid object. Null pointers are routinely used to represent conditions such as the end of a list of unknown length or the failure to perform some action; this use of null pointers can be compared to nullable types and to the Nothing value in an option type.
Copy constructors are the standard way of copying objects in C++, as opposed to cloning, and have C++-specific nuances. The first argument of such a constructor is a reference to an object of the same type as is being constructed (const or non-const), which might be followed by parameters of any type (all having default values).
Non-static member functions (instance methods) have an implicit parameter (the this pointer) which is the pointer to the object it is operating on, so the type of the object must be included as part of the type of the function pointer. The method is then used on an object of that class by using one of the "pointer-to-member" operators: .* or ...
When an object is created, a pointer to this table, called the virtual table pointer, vpointer or VPTR, is added as a hidden member of this object. As such, the compiler must also generate "hidden" code in the constructors of each class to initialize a new object's virtual table pointer to the address of its class's virtual method table.
Nonetheless, a situation may arise where a copy of an object needs to be created when a pointer to a derived object is passed as a pointer to a base object. In such a case, a common solution is to create a clone () (or similar) virtual function that creates and returns a copy of the derived class when called.
VB .NET and C# also allow the use of the new operator to create value type objects, but these value type objects are created on the stack regardless of whether the operator is used or not. In C++, objects are created on the stack when the constructor is invoked without the new operator, and created on the heap when the constructor is invoked ...
To facilitate classes' ability to reference themselves, C++ implements the this keyword for all member functions. The this keyword acts as a pointer to the current object. [18] Its type is that of a pointer to the current object. The this keyword is especially important for member functions with the class itself as the return value:
In the C++ programming language, auto_ptr is an obsolete smart pointer class template that was available in previous versions of the C++ standard library (declared in the <memory> header file), which provides some basic RAII features for C++ raw pointers. It has been replaced by the unique_ptr class.