From: David Abrahams

"Ovanes Markarian" writes:

...

Does anyone know if it possible to determine if a class overloads a certain function _where_ the return type is unknown.

An example is the -> operator. It can return any type. My question is: is it possible to determine at compile time if some type overloads the -> operator, without knowing the return type when this operator is overloaded?

That would only be possible if -> could be a free function, but IIRC it is required to be a member function... so the answer is no.

You can do it for any function that can be implemented as a non-member (see e.g. boost/detail/is_incrementable.hpp).

Also, if your end goal is still something like is_pointer_like<T>, instead of detecting operator->, you might be able to use the same techniques as is_incrementable to detect operator * (unary) - ie implement is_dereferenceable<T>. Would it be OK to assume is_pointer_like<T> '==' is_dereferenceable<T> ? Tony