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Asked: 2026-05-20T05:34:13+00:00

I was wondering if it is good practice to use the member operator .

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I was wondering if it is good practice to use the member operator . like this:

someVector = (segment.getFirst() - segment.getSecond()).normalize().normalCCW();

Just made that to show the two different things I was wondering, namely if using (expressions).member/function() and foo.getBar().getmoreBar() were in keeping with the spirit of readability and maintainability. In all the c++ code and books I learned from, I’ve never seen it used in this way, yet its intoxicatingly easy to use it as such. Don’t want to develop any bad habits though.

Probably more (or less) important than that, I was also wondering if there would be any performance gains/losses by using it in this fashion, or unforeseen pitfalls that would introduce bugs into the program.

Thank you in advance!

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  1. Editorial Team

    or unforeseen pitfalls that would introduce bugs into the program

    Well, the possible pitfalls would be

    1. Harder to debug. You won’t be able to view the results of each function call, so if one of them is returning something unexpected you will need to break it up into smaller segments to see what is going on. Also, any call in the chain may fail completely, so again, you may have to break it up to find out which call is failing.

    2. Harder to read (sometimes). Chaining function calls can make the code harder to read. It depends on the situation, there’s no hard and fast rule here. If the expression is even somewhat complex it can make things hard to follow. I don’t have any problem reading your specific example.

    It ultimately comes down to personal preference. I don’t strive to fit as much as possible on a single line, and I have been bitten enough times by chaining where I shouldn’t that I tend to break things up a bit. However, for simple expressions which are not likely to fail, chaining is fine.

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