Question

It looks like std::cout can’t print member function’s address, for example:

#include <iostream>

using std::cout;
using std::endl;

class TestClass
{
  void MyFunc(void);

public:
  void PrintMyFuncAddress(void);
};

void TestClass::MyFunc(void)
{
  return;
}

void TestClass::PrintMyFuncAddress(void)
{
  printf("%p\n", &TestClass::MyFunc);
  cout << &TestClass::MyFunc << endl;
}

int main(void)
{
  TestClass a;

  a.PrintMyFuncAddress();

  return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

the result is something like this:

003111DB
1

How can I print MyFunc‘s address using std::cout?

Answer 1

I don’t believe that there are any facilities provided by the language for doing this. There are overloads for operator << for streams to print out normal void* pointers, but member function pointers are not convertible to void*s. This is all implementation-specific, but typically member function pointers are implemented as a pair of values – a flag indicating whether or not the member function is virtual, and some extra data. If the function is a non-virtual function, that extra information is typically the actual member function’s address. If the function is a virtual function, that extra information probably contains data about how to index into the virtual function table to find the function to call given the receiver object.

In general, I think this means that it’s impossible to print out the addresses of member functions without invoking undefined behavior. You’d probably have to use some compiler-specific trick to achieve this effect.

Hope this helps!