Is there a C++ equivalent to objective-c's -debugDescription method for Xcode 7?

Question

In Objective-C you can add a method called -debugDescription to your classes that return a string. The Xcode debugger will call this method to display the value of the class in the debugger. Is there an equivalent to this in C++?

Answer 1

No (not with the functionality that the plain language provides). C++ has no so called root object compared to Objective-C's NSObject (or NSProxy ). For such metainfo/introspection/reflection you have to use libraries like Qt or others that support such features.

Answer 2

While not as universal, you can add your own description methods to certain classes of interest and po the method at runtime from the console.

Eg

std::string your_class::desc()
{
    return "test";
}

(lldb) po ((your_class*)0x000000010072adf8)->desc()
"test"