C++ passing *this in member initialization list

Question

In C++, I'm trying to have a member variable hold reference to its owner object. This means that I must use *this before constructor body. This compiles in g++ -std=c++11. However, is this standard?

class Owner
{
    class Data
    {
        friend class Owner; 

        Owner& owner; 
        Data(Owner& owner) : owner(owner) {}
    } data;

public: 
    Owner() : data(*this) {}
};

In my specific use, data is a public field, providing access to some functionality of the owner (syntactic sugar as for(element : container))

Should be, elements are always destroyed in reverse order of creation, so you can never be in a situation where `data` has an invalid reference. — Fantastic Mr Fox, Jun 07 '18 at 06:41
thanks a lot! figured it must have been asked already, but could find tl;dr from the duplicate question: it's legal, but must use with caution. — Yuri Feldman, Jun 07 '18 at 07:36

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 07 '18 at 06:43

1

Yes, it is standard. Your code is correct.

answered Jun 07 '18 at 06:43

navyblue

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C++ passing *this in member initialization list

1 Answers1