Re: [boost] [RFC] Protocol for operator. (dot) overloading

Subject: Re: [boost] [RFC] Protocol for operator. (dot) overloading
From: Mathias Gaunard (mathias.gaunard_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-10-05 20:02:49

Corrado Zoccolo wrote:
> Hi boosters,
> I think that Adobe poly approach on "operator . overloading" could be
> extracted as orthogonal to the polymorphic object container concept, and
> easily generalized to serve all kinds of wrappers.
> 
> My proposal (see code in the vault: *http://tinyurl.com/5xo9or*) is to have
> a class template (interface<T,W,B>) that describes the interface of type T,
> forwarding any operation to the implementation type, got directly from the
> wrapper (W). B is used when vertical inheritance is needed, either to
> benefit of EBO or to insert a base class on top of the hierarchy (see
> type_erasure_wrapper). There is actually a fourth boolean parameter, that
> will be explained later.

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.

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.