Question

Possible Duplicates:
Why ‘this’ is a pointer and not a reference?
SAFE Pointer to a pointer (well reference to a reference) in C#

The this keyword in C++ gets a pointer to the object I currently am.

My question is why is the type of this a pointer type and not a reference type.
Are there any conditions under which the this keyword would be NULL?

My immediate thought would be in a static function, but Visual C++ at least is smart enough to spot this and report static member functions do not have 'this' pointers. Is this in the standard?

Answer 1

See Stroustrup’s Why is this not a reference

Because “this” was introduced into C++ (really into C with Classes) before references were added. Also, I chose “this” to follow Simula usage, rather than the (later) Smalltalk use of “self”.