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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!hplabs!hp-pcd!orstcs!nathan
From: nathan@orstcs.UUCP (nathan)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Overloading
Message-ID: <34200008@orstcs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 20-Mar-86 12:10:00 EST
Article-I.D.: orstcs.34200008
Posted: Thu Mar 20 12:10:00 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Mar-86 02:45:35 EST
References: <5125@alice.UUCP>
Organization: Oregon State University - Corvallis, OR
Lines: 21
Nf-ID: #R:alice:-512500:orstcs:34200008:000:941
Nf-From: orstcs!nathan    Mar 20 09:10:00 1986

>You can also look at it from another angle: Why not just provide a few useful
>``extra'' operators? (SETL did that - in the first version only). So I asked
>around. People wanted operators ** // <- -> etc. ...
>
>	- Bjarne Stroustrup (AT&T Bell Labs, Murray Hill)

This brings up a discussion which should *not* be carried on further
in this group: everybody's favorite unimplemented operators.

Just to break my own rule, I propose
	spp->>f == (*spp)->f  == (**spp).f
for dereferencing "handles".  Perhaps a better solution would be to define
a right-binding dereference operator, "^", so that we could say
	s.f ==  sp^.f == spp^^.f
and not need any funny precedence-hacks.  Isn't originality wonderful? :-)

BTW, I'm curious why the "." and "->" operators aren't real operators.
Obviously there isn't any standard type for their right operand, but
is the answer more subtle than this?

Nathan C. Myers		orstcs!nathan		nathan@oregon-state