Hi Gunther, The easiest way to implement your desired functionality is to make "passing in the varname" a parameter, and by convention pass in the varname. ---------------------------------------------------------------- #include <iostream> #include <string> using std::cout; using std::endl; struct uniform { uniform(std::string const& prettyVarname) { cout << "A variable called \x1B[32m" << prettyVarname << "\x1B[0m was just instantiated (sp)" << endl; } }; void main() { uniform blah("blah"); } ---------------------------------------------------------------- HTH, --Eljay