Question

I’m trying to overload the dereference operator, but compiling the following code results in the error 'initializing' : cannot convert from 'X' to 'int':

struct X {
    void f() {}
    int operator*() const { return 5; }
};

int main()
{
    X* x = new X;
    int t = *x;
    delete x;
    return -898;
}

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

You should apply dereference operator to a class type. In your code x has a pointer type. Write the following:

int t = **x;

or

int t = x->operator*();