Question

Suppose some type Foo has an overloaded operator-> that returns a Bar*:

struct Foo
{
    Bar* operator->();
};

If I want to destruct the returned Bar instance in-place from within the Foo class, can I write the following?

this->~Bar();

g++ does not like that code. It works if I write this:

(*this)->~Bar();

Does the “rescursive forwarding rule” not apply in this case? Why not?

Answer 1

Here is the rule for chaining ->, found in 13.5.6 [over.ref] of the standard:

An expression x->m is interpreted as (x.operator->())->m for a class object x of type T if T::operator->() exists and if the operator is selected as the best match function by the overload resolution mechanism (13.3).

Since this is a pointer, not a class object, it doesn’t apply.

Instead, this rule in 5.2.5 ([expr.ref]) is applicable:

For the second option (arrow) the first expression shall have pointer to complete class type. The expression E1->E2 is converted to the equivalent form (*(E1)).E2; the remainder of 5.2.5 will address only the first option (dot).