Using the this pointer to differentiate between member data and parameters

This is an actual useful strategy to differentiate member data from parameters… Lets take this example :

#include <iostream>
#include <string>

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

class Dog
{
 public:
    Dog(std::string name);
    ~Dog();
    void  bark() const;
    std::string  getName() const;
 private:
    std::string name;
};

Dog::Dog(std::string name)
{
    /*
    *  this->name is the
    *  name variable from 
    *  the class dog . and
    *  name is from the 
    *  parameter of the function
    */
    this->name = name; 
}

Dog::~Dog(){}

void Dog::bark() const
{
  cout << "BARK" << endl;   
}

std::string  Dog::getName() const
{
    return this->name;
}

int main()
{
    Dog dog("Max");
    cout << dog.getName() << endl;
    dog.bark();
}

You can see here in the constructor we execute the following:

this->name = name;

Here , you can see we are assinging the parameter name to the name of the private variable from the class Dog(this->name) .

To see the output of above code : http://cpp.sh/75r7

Found a mistake? Have a question or improvement idea? Let me know.

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