🚀 go-pugleaf

I agree with Joe Buck - this issue is at this stage dead and buried, at
least for this round of standardization.  But I can't let comments like
these pass unchallenged ;-)

David Byrden <100101.2547@compuserve.com> writes:

>New facilities are not added to the C++ language when their effect can be 
>attained by a little programming using existing facilities.
>
>From your description, it seems to me that an your operator.() object 
>method would return a reference to another object, and the named member 
>function would be called in that object. For example, here is class 
>Handle acting as a proxy for a class Bitmap;
[...]
>Operator.() was not overloaded because you can achieve exactly this same 
>effect without it,

Perhaps you can in this particular case...

>if the clas Handle has a set of member functions matching those in Bitmap,

... but only with a lot of tedious programming.  Furthermore, all those
forwarding functions are a maintenance problem; every time you add
a new function to Bitmap, you need to remember to add one to Handle.

Now, please tell me how to write a template smart reference class without
using operator.()?  Can I attain that effect "with a little programming
using existing facilities"?  I think not.

--
Fergus Henderson             	WWW: http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh
fjh@cs.mu.oz.au              	PGP: finger fjh@128.250.37.3
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