Re: ((Object *)NULL)->MemberFunction();

From:
James Kanze <james.kanze@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Sun, 2 Mar 2008 05:46:20 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID:
<fb7fcd08-2599-4df1-9522-f5ded4d79be9@v3g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>
On 2 mar, 04:06, Ian Collins <ian-n...@hotmail.com> wrote:

jason.cipri...@gmail.com wrote:

Sorry about the subject but it's the most descriptive thing
I came up with. Is something like this safe to do:

// all objects let you get some string ID
class BaseObject {
public:
  virtual const char * GetID (void) const;


Drop the C style void,

virtual const char* GetID() const = 0;

Is correct and idiomatic C++.

// i can guarantee that no GetID implementations access any
// member data; they all just return a char array, nothing more.

// then, this function gets the ID of an object given it's type,
// without actually instantiating a T:
template <class T> const char * GetObjectID () {
  return ((T *)NULL)->GetID();
}


This can not work for polymorphic objects. The object has to
be properly constructed in order to call a virtual method.


It's undefined behavior for any member function, virtual or not.
The fact that in some implementations, it does seem to work if
the function isn't virtual is irrelevant.

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James Kanze (GABI Software) email:james.kanze@gmail.com
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