`this`

All C++ classes have a pointer called this that refers to the current object. This is useful, since some functions, as we will see, need to return a reference to the object we are working on.

Here’s a very simple example that creates a class that only holds a string and then defines a member function, get_ref(), that returns a reference to itself (by returning *this as a reference).

Listing 89 this_example.cpp

#include <iostream>

class Example {

private:

    std::string data;

    // simple constructor

public:

    Example(const std::string& input_string) : data{input_string} {};

    // getter

    std::string get_data() {return data;}

    // function that returns a reference -- just for demostration

    Example& get_ref() {return *this;}

};

int main() {

    Example test("this is my test string");

    Example& new_class = test.get_ref();

    std::cout << new_class.get_data() << std::endl;
}

Another way we could use this is to access the member data inside of the class. Since this is a pointer, we will use the member selection operator for pointers, e.g., this->data.

this

`this`