Please decorate on the 'nasty aliasing issues'. For more details of my intention, please refer to my previous mail I just posted. I hope ther's a even more elgent way to get rid of the issues you mentioned.
Given your requirement then this does seem a fairly good solution. I was just pointing out that you will have to ensure that the lifetime of the objects being bound to the reference wrappers are at least as long as the reference wrappers themselves. This is no different than references or pointers.
Thank you for your furthur clarification. It's quite clear and elegant. The life-time problem should not be an extra burden raised by this solution. Thanks again for your help. And thanks to Ravi, too. B/Rgds Max
Bill Somerville Class Design Limited