Is there a __CLASS__ macro in C++?

Question

Is there a __CLASS__ macro in C++ which gives the class name similar to __FUNCTION__ macro which gives the function name

Answer 1

The problem with using typeid(*this).name() is that there is no this pointer in a static method call. The macro __PRETTY_FUNCTION__ reports a class name in static functions as well as method calls. However, this will only work with gcc.

Here's an example of extracting the information through a macro style interface.

inline std::string methodName(const std::string& prettyFunction)
{
    size_t colons = prettyFunction.find("::");
    size_t begin = prettyFunction.substr(0,colons).rfind(" ") + 1;
    size_t end = prettyFunction.rfind("(") - begin;

    return prettyFunction.substr(begin,end) + "()";
}

#define __METHOD_NAME__ methodName(__PRETTY_FUNCTION__)

The macro __METHOD_NAME__ will return a string of the form <class>::<method>(), trimming the return type, modifiers and arguments from what __PRETTY_FUNCTION__ gives you.

For something which extracts just the class name, some care must be taken to trap situations where there is no class:

inline std::string className(const std::string& prettyFunction)
{
    size_t colons = prettyFunction.find("::");
    if (colons == std::string::npos)
        return "::";
    size_t begin = prettyFunction.substr(0,colons).rfind(" ") + 1;
    size_t end = colons - begin;

    return prettyFunction.substr(begin,end);
}

#define __CLASS_NAME__ className(__PRETTY_FUNCTION__)