Visual Studio not able to show the value of 'this' in release mode (with debug information)

Question

Original question:

Why is the this pointer 0 in a VS c++ release build?

When breaking in a Visual Studio 2008 SP1 release build with the /Zi

Answer 1

It isn't the this pointer that is NULL, but rather the pointer you are using to call a member function:

class A
{
public:
    void f() {}
};

int main()
{
    A* a = NULL;
    a->f(); // DO'H!  NULL pointer access ...

    // FIX
    A* a = new A;
    a->f(); // Aha!
}