Hi Matias, <http://www.research.att.com/%7Ebs/bs_faq2.html#overload-dot> On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 2:02 AM, Mathias Gaunard < mathias.gaunard@ens-lyon.org> wrote:
Such a complicated and specific mechanism.
I think a lot of people come up with lots of approaches at overloading the dot operator which really do not truly overload its meaning.
actually, my proposal approximates in current C++ Gary Powell's, Doug Gregor's and Jaakko Jaarvi's proposal (see WG21/N1671), and is inline with Stroustrup's initial idea of what overloading operator. would be in C++, if it was allowed (see: http://www.research.att.com/~bs/bs_faq2.html#overload-dot<http://www.research.att.com/%7Ebs/bs_faq2.html#overload-dot>, or D&E).
What that operator takes is an an object, a name, and arguments. Therefore, in my opinion, overloading the dot operator should mean calling a function with a compile-time string and those arguments. Then, with proper compile-time introspection support (an mpl map of compile-time strings to functor types), one can for example choose to call a member function with that name on some type, or do something else.
This idea is nice, but it introduces an asymmetry with how operator -> is handled. Moreover, the same counter arguments as those for not overloading operator :: (scope resolution) hold (see: http://www.research.att.com/~bs/bs_faq2.html#overload-dot<http://www.research.att.com/%7Ebs/bs_faq2.html#overload-dot>). Corrado
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