Recently two of our developers encountered the same problem with boost::dereferenceable<>::operator->(). There were an iterator which returned value_type from its operator*, not value_type&: value_type operator*() const; And it was inherited from boost::random_access_iterator_helper, which in turn is indirectly inherited from boost::dereferenceable. Since our iterator class template did not have its own operator->, one from boost::dereferenceable<> was inherited. And it is defined as follows: P operator->() const { return &*static_cast<const T&>(*this); } where P is pointer to value_type of corresponding iterator. Both of the compilers which we use (MSVC 6.0 and CodeWarrior) compile this code without any errors (though at least one of them did gave a warning). That lead to operator-> returning addres of a temporary object. What do you think about modifying operator-> so that it would be permissive to iterators for which operator* gives rvalue? E.g. this way: struct address_of_proxy { value_type value; address_of_proxy( value_type const& v ) : value( v ) { } operator value_type const*() const { return &value; } value_type const* operator->() const { return &value; } }; address_of_proxy operator->() const { return address_of_proxy( *static_cast<const T&>(*this) ); } where value_type is value_type of corresponding iterator. And of course it is possible to avoid creating proxy object when iterator's operator* returns reference, not value... -- Pavel Kuznetsov MetaCommunications Engineering http://www.meta-comm.com/engineering