Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!microsoft!jimad
From: jimad@microsoft.UUCP (Jim ADCOCK)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Overloaded operator dot?
Message-ID: <71516@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: 25 Mar 91 21:15:16 GMT
References: <11152@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> <624@taumet.com> <12193@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> <1991Mar21.032937.16534@world.std.com>
Reply-To: jimad@microsoft.UUCP (Jim ADCOCK)
Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA
Lines: 29

In article <1991Mar21.032937.16534@world.std.com> wmm@world.std.com (William M Miller) writes:
|That doesn't answer the question -- all you've done is to give the new
|feature a name.  The real issue is whether the technique solves any major
|problems that can only be addressed awkwardly or not at all in the existing
|language.  In other words, give some specific applications that demonstrate
|that "smart references" aren't just another of the hundreds of nifty ideas
|floating around that are cute and interesting but don't really expand the
|power of the language to address real-world problems.

I disagree.  On the contrary, I believe Joe Buck, myself, and others
have repeatedly shown what the problem is.  But, when we place all the problems
we've found into one category which we label "smart references" some
people argue that we're just applying a name to a category we've made up.  
And then when we show specific short examples of the problem then people 
argue that the examples we give are academic and give hack work-arounds.

Even if it *were* true that people can do things similar to smart 
references with smart pointers [albeit at the cost of customers having to 
guess whether to use pointer or dot syntax everywhere] why should it be 
that throughout the C++ languages people have the choice  
to either use pointers or references --

-- EXCEPT when it comes to operator overloading?

Why not just make the language orthogonal and say that its up to the 
programmer to decide when its appropriate to use pointers, and when
its appropriate to use references?  Why in this one obscure case in the
language try to mandate some people's preference of pointers over references?
Why defend an exceptional case, when it can be easily removed?