Question

Will creating this new object, v, result in an entirely new object or simply the same object space referenced by *this?

Vector2 v = *this;

I would not expect it is actually creating a new object, but I’m seeing this code in a sample app that then manipulates this new object even though this code is in a class function that is set as const. Thus I would expect that this object,v, is in fact entirely a separate memory space than *this.

Answer 1

It’s creating a new object, yes – but by initialization, not assignment.

You can however bypass that by using references, Vector2& v = *this;, in which case v is an alias for *this (or const Vector& v = *this, if the method is const).

The reasons for this is exactly the one you stated – since the method in which this happens is const, there’s no way to mutate *this – so you need a non-const copy of it.