Re: [boost] Bind question, is there any way to implicitly go through a reference_wrapper?

Michael Goldshteyn:

// This doesn't compile, however, even though the reference_wrapper class template has // an overloaded operator T& () const function

std::string colorFromConstRef2(boost::bind(&Crayon::GetColor,_1)(crefCr));

It doesn't because of the mem_fn behavior that bind inherits. The argument is not a reference to Crayon and so is assumed to be a smart pointer to Crayon. mem_fn then tries to invoke get_pointer() on it to obtain a Crayon*. You should be able to make it compile by adding a get_pointer overload for reference_wrapper: namespace boost { template<class T> T* get_pointer( reference_wrapper<T> const & r ) { return r.get_pointer(); } }