Hi NetFolk,

are ther any thoughts about changing the meaning of operator* by use
in declaration? I would like to prohibit to declare pointers to some
of my classes, if I had overloaded the operator* for use in
implementation. Example:

class DatabaseLine;

class DatabaseLine*    // a smart-pointer to a DatabaseLine / new syntax
{
...
 DatabaseLine(::*) operator->(); // return a real pointer
 DatabaseLine&   operator*();

 DatabaseLine*   operator++();
 DatabaseLine*   operator--();

 DatabaseLine*   operator++(int);
 DatabaseLine*   operator--(int);

 operator unsigned long (); // index in database or 0 if NULL-pointer
};

void EditLine( DatabaseLine &rLine );

int main()
{
 Database aBase( "file.name.data" );
 for ( DatabaseLine *pLine = aBase.First(); // declare a smart-pointer
    pLine != 0;
    pLine++ )
  EditLine( *pLine );
}

I know about the problem to recognize that there are smart-pointers defined,
if the definition of these is out of scope like here:

class DatabaseLine;

struct I_use_a_wrong_pointer
{
 DatabaseLine* pLine; // ooh!
 ...
};

Further ideas?

Adios

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