get the calling function?

[daviddoria]

Is there anyway to get the calling function?
ie

void A()
{
if (A() was called from B() )
 do something;
else
 do something else
}

Is this possible?

Dave

[Rashakil Fol]

No, and even if it were possible, it would be completely counterintuitive.

Also, it's completely unnecessary. Instead, pass a parameter that tells how you want the function to behave.

[daviddoria]

It's not that counterintuitive. I'm using some minimization software that calls my function a whole bunch of times. In those cases, I don't want to output anything to the screen. But if I call my function manually (from main() for example), then I would like to see some output. It is a restriction of the library that the function must only take certain parameters, so it is not possible to simply pass a flag as you suggest.

Dave

[StuXYZ]

You can get 99% of what you want (if I understand correctly)

You declare a global variable, say outputFlag (or put it in a namespace when doing it properly) and have the function check that. Ugly but gets the job done.

Also have a wrapper function (which takes the flag) and then calls the required function after setting the outputFlag variable.

If you can't touch the function itself (i.e. it is in a library), then buffering the output, and discarding/printing is an ugly solution, but it is ugly and can have side effects on errors etc.

The other slightly more sophisticated way is to stream all your output through a logger, then the logger can be set to take care of the output/no-output calls. But for one function I wouldn't bother, but for several it is starting to look like a better idea.

There are some platform specific methods of getting the backtrace call, but normally that also involves leaving a level of debug trace and limiting the optimization, and they are REALLY messy.

[Rashakil Fol]

It's not that counterintuitive.

Yes it is. Having functions secretly behave differently depending on invisible environmental variables is tremendously counterintuitive.