why "." and "->" operators ?

[Guest]

I used to remember why c++ needed both.

For example

class A{

f();

};



A* aa;



You could do either "aa->f()" or "(*aa).f()". So why does C++ need both
operators.



Raj

 

[David Harmon]

On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 15:48:09 GMT in comp.lang.c++,

You could do either "aa->f()" or "(*aa).f()". So why does C++ need both
operators.

I guess this is a question for you to ask Dennis Ritchie in
alt.folklore.computers
It certainly goes back to the early days of C.

In C, aa->f() is strictly a convenient shorthand way to write (*aa).f().

in C++, if aa is an instance of a class that overloads operator*()
and/or operator->(), then they may not be strictly identical. It would
be a bad idea to make those operators behave in some bizarre unexpected
way, but you might easily have some reason to add some special behavior
to them.