Retrieving a c++ class name programatically

Question

I was wondering if it is possible in C++ to retrieve the name of a class in string form without having to hardcode it into a variable or a getter. I'm aware that none of that information is actually used at runtime, therefor it is unavailable, but are there any macros that can be made to create this functionality? Thanks.

Edit: May be helpful to note that I'm actually trying to retrieve the name of a derived class, and I'm using Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition.

Answer 1

You can use RTTI:

#include <typeinfo>
cout << typeid(obj).name() << endl;

However, this is discouraged since the format isn' standardized and may differ between different compilers (or even different versions of the same compiler).