Repeating safe-bool scaffolding over and over again is a real nuisance. It is worse for the end users as not exactly everyone is intimately familiar with the issue and the safe-bool workaround. Can we generalize it and put something like the following into utilities? struct safebool { typedef void (safebool::*unspecified_bool_type)() const; typedef unspecified_bool_type result; explicit safebool(bool v) : value_(v) {} operator result() const { return value_ ? &safebool::internal_bool : 0; } private: void internal_bool() const {}; bool value_; }; That way all we (and the users) will have to do to deploy the technique will be class Foo { ... operator safebool::result() const { return safebool(my_condition); } }; This seems simple and hassle-free. Thanks, Vladimir.