Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!watmsg!gjditchfield
From: gjditchfield@watmsg.uwaterloo.ca (Glen Ditchfield)
Subject: Re: overloading operator . and ->
Message-ID: <1991Mar26.155836.14539@watmath.waterloo.edu>
Sender: daemon@watmath.waterloo.edu (0000-Admin(0000))
Organization: University of Waterloo
References: <14.UUL1.3#8618@softrue.UUCP> <4608@lupine.NCD.COM> <1991Mar25.154013.4044@world.std.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 1991 15:58:36 GMT
Lines: 14

In article <1991Mar25.154013.4044@world.std.com> wmm@world.std.com (William M Miller) writes:
>For me, allowing operator->() leads to a more consistent language while
>still permitting me the syntactic convenience of writing ptr->member instead
>of (*ptr).member.  I agree that the expansion of "ptr->member" to
>"(ptr.operator->())->member" is a bit strange, but I think the alternatives
>(implicit invocation of operator*() for "->" or not allowing the ptr->member
>notation at all) are worse.

There was another alternative.  Don't treat "->" and "." as infix operators;
treat "->foo" and ".foo" as postfix operators.  That's how the ANSI C
standard defines them.
    struct C { int operator ->foo(); };
This wouldn't have helped programmers who want to define smart pointers.