Pointer-to-member: what does the pointer value represent?

Question

I am playing with pointer-to-members and decided to actually print the values of the pointers. The result was not what I expected.

#include <iostream>

struct ManyIntegers {

    int a,b,c,d;
};

int main () {

    int ManyIntegers::* p;

    p = &ManyIntegers::a;
    std::cout << "p = &ManyIntegers::a = " << p << std::endl; // prints 1

    p = &ManyIntegers::b;
    std::cout << "p = &ManyIntegers::b = " << p << std::endl; // prints 1

    p = &ManyIntegers::c;
    std::cout << "p = &ManyIntegers::c = " << p << std::endl; // prints 1

    p = &ManyIntegers::d;
    std::cout << "p = &ManyIntegers::d = " << p << std::endl; // prints 1

    return 0;
}

Why is the value of p always 1? Shouldn't the value of p somehow reflect which class member it points to?

Answer 1

As everyone has said, ostream doesn't have the appropriate operator<< defined.

Try this:

#include <cstddef>
#include <iostream>

struct Dumper {
  unsigned char *p;
  std::size_t size;
  template<class T>
  Dumper(const T& t) : p((unsigned char*)&t), size(sizeof t) { }
  friend std::ostream& operator<<(std::ostream& os, const Dumper& d) {
    for(std::size_t i = 0; i < d.size; i++) {
      os << "0x" << std::hex << (unsigned int)d.p[i] << " ";
    }
    return os;
  }
};

#include <iostream>

struct ManyIntegers {

    int a,b,c,d;
};

int main () {

    int ManyIntegers::* p;

    p = &ManyIntegers::a;
    std::cout << "p = &ManyIntegers::a = " << Dumper(p) << "\n"; 

    p = &ManyIntegers::b;
    std::cout << "p = &ManyIntegers::b = " << Dumper(p) << "\n"; 

    p = &ManyIntegers::c;
    std::cout << "p = &ManyIntegers::c = " << Dumper(p) << "\n"; 

    p = &ManyIntegers::d;
    std::cout << "p = &ManyIntegers::d = " << Dumper(p) << "\n"; 

    return 0;
}

Answer 2

Standard ostream operator<< has no overload for pointer to member, so you pointer has been implicitly converted to bool.

Answer 3

p actually contains offset in object. Printing them prints implicit converted bool value true or false if they really contains some offset or not respectively. Conversion happens due to the fact that ostream's insertion member doesn't have any overload for pointers to members.

Answer 4

There is no overload of operator<< which takes pointer-to-member as argument. So if you try printing pointer-to-member, it implicitly converts into true which gets passed to the overload which takes bool as argument, and it prints 1 corresponds to true.

If you use std::boolalpha stream-manipulator, it will print true instead of 1:

std::cout << std::boolalpha << "p = &ManyIntegers::a = " << p ;
           //^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Output (see at ideone):

p = &ManyIntegers::a = true

Answer 5

A member pointer isn't necessarily a numeric value, more often than not it will be a struct or something the like. I don't think there is a way to obtain a value from a member pointer, but even if there is I don't see how that would be useful.

Answer 6

Here's a fully standards-compliant implementation to show the in-memory representation of the pointer-to-members:

#include <iostream>
#include <iomanip>

template<int... I> struct index_tuple { using succ = index_tuple<I..., sizeof...(I)>; };
template<int I> struct indexer { using type = typename indexer<I - 1>::type::succ; };
template<> struct indexer<0> { using type = index_tuple<>; };
template<typename T> typename indexer<sizeof(T)>::type index(const T &) { return {}; }

template<typename T> class dumper {
    unsigned char buf[sizeof(T)];
    friend std::ostream &operator<<(std::ostream &os, const dumper &o) {
        std::ios_base::fmtflags flags{os.flags()};
        std::copy_n(o.buf, sizeof(T),
            std::ostream_iterator<int>(os << std::hex << std::showbase, " "));
        return os << std::setiosflags(flags);
    }
    template<int... I> dumper (const T &t, index_tuple<I...>):
        buf{reinterpret_cast<const unsigned char *>(&t)[I]...} {}
public:
    dumper(const T &t): dumper(t, index(t)) {}
};
template<typename T> dumper<T> dump(const T &t) { return {t}; }

struct ManyIntegers {
    int a,b,c,d;
};

int main () {
    std::cout << "p = &ManyIntegers::a = " << dump(&ManyIntegers::a) << std::endl;
    std::cout << "p = &ManyIntegers::b = " << dump(&ManyIntegers::b) << std::endl;
    std::cout << "p = &ManyIntegers::c = " << dump(&ManyIntegers::c) << std::endl;
    std::cout << "p = &ManyIntegers::d = " << dump(&ManyIntegers::d) << std::endl;
}

Output is as expected:

p = &ManyIntegers::a = 0 0 0 0 
p = &ManyIntegers::b = 0x4 0 0 0 
p = &ManyIntegers::c = 0x8 0 0 0 
p = &ManyIntegers::d = 0xc 0 0 0