[mpyne]

That's a good point, calling a virtual method on a null pointer is the source of some backtraces that seem to start a few bytes past 0.

Naming things is always difficult, but I meant class method, although what I should have said was non-virtual class method, which is possible in C++. Both virtual and non-virtual have "this" pointers, the difference is whether the class method to call is looked up at runtime or compile-time, so I still would consider both "methods". I didn't learn OOP from Smalltalk so I may be abusing the terminology (it's not intentional).

[mikeash]

I believe the correct terminology for C++ would be "member function", and specifically "non-virtual member function" for the ones that actually work with NULL. I also wouldn't be surprised if using a non-virtual member function with NULL is actually undefined behavior that just happens to work with popular compilers, although I'm too lazy to look up the standard to see.

"Class method" is usually used to refer to methods that class objects have themselves, as opposed to an "instance method", which is a method that instances of a class possess. C++ doesn't have class objects or class methods.