Question

I’ve see this done before in languages based on mono, but I’m just curious if this would be possible in c++. If I had the following class

  class test {
    public:
    int foo;
    int myfunction();
  };

when I try and access the foo variable, is their any way I can make it so it calls myfunction and returns its value?

test t;
cout << t.foo;//instead of printing the value of foo, print the return value of myfunction

Thanks in advance!
I googled this but wasn’t able to find anything.

Or, could it be possible to call a function with no arguments without the parenthesis?

Wow! Thanks for all the input guys. The main reason I wanted no parenthesis is that I’m trying to make this API as similar to that of an old, non-c++ API. Not having two parenthesis after a function in this class might make maintenance a bit harder, but it will saves me hours of answering why Vector2.normalized has to have () after it.

Answer 1

One possible workaround, which is a bit evil, would be to use a macro.

#include <stdio.h>

#define FOO myfunction()

class test {
  private:
    int foo;
  public:    
    int myfunction() {
      return 42;
    }
};

int main() {
  test t;
  printf("%d\n",t.FOO);
  return 0;
}

As I alluded to in the comments to your OP though, I think such tricks are terrible from a maintenance perspective, and should be avoided.