Can 'this' pointer be different than the object's pointer?

Question

I\'ve recently came across this strange function in some class:

void* getThis() {return this;}

And later in the code it is sometimes used like

Answer 1

No. Yes, in limited circumstances.

This looks like it is something inspired by Smalltalk, in which all objects have a yourself method. There are probably some situations in which this makes code cleaner. As the comments note, this looks like an odd way to even implement this idiom in c++.

In your specific case, I'd grep for actual usages of the method to see how it is used.