Re: Pointer to non-static member functions

From:
peter koch <peter.koch.larsen@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Thu, 8 May 2008 02:56:31 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<92edca7c-623c-4d1c-9bdb-36d0e940c358@r66g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>
On 8 Maj, 11:26, Tim Frink <plfr...@yahoo.de> wrote:

Hi,

I'm experimenting with function pointers and found
two questions. Let's assume this code:

  1 #include <iostream>
  2 class A;
  3
  4 ////////////////////////////////////////////
  5 class B
  6 {
  7 public:
  8 void printB( void (A::*)(void) );
  9 };
 10
 11 void B::printB( void (A::*func)(void) )
 12 {
 13 *func(); // not working
 14 }
 15
 16 ////////////////////////////////////////////
 17 class A
 18 {
 19 public:
 20 void printA(void);
 21 void invokeB(void);
 22
 23 private:
 24 B myB;
 25 };
 26
 27 void A::printA(void)
 28 {
 29 std::cout << "A::print" << std::endl;
 30 return;
 31 }
 32
 33 void A::invokeB(void)
 34 {
 35 myB.printB( &A::printA );
 36 return;
 37 }
 38
 39 ////////////////////////////////////////////
 40 int main(void)
 41 {
 42 A myA;
 43 a.invokeB();
 44
 45 return 0;
 46 }

What I want to achieve is a communication between two object
with a callback function. Object A invokes a function in
object B passing a callback function. The invoked function in
object B calls the passed callback function to communicate
with the caller A.

So, I'm passing a pointer to A::printA in line 35 to
B::printB. The called member function printB of object
myB than should deference the passed function pointer
(line 13, not working yet) to invoke again a function
(A::printfA) of the original caller. Thus, myA invokes
myB which in turn invokes myA again.

My first question concerns line 35. What exactly is the
address of &A::printA? When I forward this value to "cout",
(cout << &A::printA) I get the output "1" and not an
address.


Probably you did print "true" because the memberfunction is not null.
Apart from that, I do not see what interest you could have in getting
its adress. If it is out of curiosity, I would recommend you to
examine the value in a debugger instead.

Since A::printA is a non-static member function,
it cannot be considered independent of a concrete object.


Yes it can. A memberfunction is not connected to any concrete object.
I will come back to that later.

Thus, I would assume that &AA::printA is an offset which
must be added to the memory address where a concrete
object of class A is allocated. Adding the start address
and the offset would result in the address where the
function printA of an individual object of class A is
located.


I am not sure I can decipher the above, but if your understanding is
that a memberfunction somehow is placed inside an object, your
understanding is wrong. A memberfunction is does not take up any space
in an object.

And this brings me to my second question concerning line
13. When I try to compiler this code, I get the compiler error:
error: must use .* or ->* to call pointer-to-member function in `func (...=

)'

(repeating offensive code)

 11 void B::printB( void (A::*func)(void) )
 12 {
 13 *func(); // not working
 14 }
 15


This is because your perception of a member-function pointer is wrong.
A member-function pointer is a pointer that can be used to call a
memberfunction oon all objects of the given type. But you have to
provide an object. So your code should have been somewhat like:

 11 void B::printB( A *a, void (A::*func)(void) )
 12 {
 13 (a->*func)();
 14 }
 15

I assume the problem is that the function pointer "func" has
no reference to a concrete object of class A (myA in this case).
So, the function cannot be invoked. How can I solve this?
Do I have to pass the address of myA to B::printB?
Something like "myB.printB( &A::printA, this );" in line 35
and than use the pointer in "this" to invoke func?

Exactly.

/Peter

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