Question

I want to modify a constructor to use an initialization list as in the following example:

class Foo
{
public:
   Foo(std::wstring bar);
private:
   std::wstring bar;
};

// VERSION 1:

Foo::Foo(std::wstring bar) {this->bar = bar}

// VERSION 2:

Foo::Foo(std::wstring bar) : this->bar(bar) {} // ERROR!

Unfortunately I can’t do version 2 because you can’t use the this pointer for data members since (I’m guessing) they don’t exist yet at that point. How then, do I deal with the name hiding issue (i.e. my parameter and my data member have the same name)?

Answer 1

You don’t need to. The first bar will refer to the member and the second bar will refer to the argument:

Foo::Foo(std::wstring bar) : bar(bar) {}