Question

in c++ i have following code

class Foobar{
public:
  Foobar * operator()(){
      return new Foobar;
 };

My quesion is how to call the ();
if i do Foobar foo() the constructor gets called
i am confused about behaviour of ()
can some explain me

Answer 1

While GMan’s answer is factually correct, you should never overload an operator to do something unexpected – this goes against all good-practice programming rules. When a user reads code he expects operators to behave in some way, and making them behave differently is good only for obfuscating coding competitions.

The () operator in C++ can be used to make an object represent a function. This actually has a name – it’s called functor, and is used extensively in the STL to provide generic algorithms. Google for stl functor to learn about a good usage of the technique.