operator overloading

[stephen henry]

Hi All,

I have a class for which I have successfully overloaded the []
operator. I can now address the class (which is a 2d array) as
follows;

C2DArray array;

array[123][100] = 53;

Unfortunately, this does not work if array is a pointer, namely:

C2DArray *array = new C2DArray;

array[123][100] = 53; // Wrong!

I have to use:

(*array)[123][100] = 53;

instead.

Is there any way to overload the [] operator so that it work in the
case where array is the object and a pointer to the object. Either
that, or some nicer way of going about it...

Thanks,

Stephen

[Victor Bazarov]

Re: operator overloading

stephen henry wrote:[color=blue]
> I have a class for which I have successfully overloaded the []
> operator. I can now address the class (which is a 2d array) as
> follows;
>
> C2DArray array;
>
> array[123][100] = 53;
>
> Unfortunately, this does not work if array is a pointer, namely:
>
> C2DArray *array = new C2DArray;
>
> array[123][100] = 53; // Wrong!
>
> I have to use:
>
> (*array)[123][100] = 53;
>
> instead.
>
> Is there any way to overload the [] operator so that it work in the
> case where array is the object and a pointer to the object.[/color]

No, there is no way. Every pointer has [] defined for it, and you cannot
change that.
[color=blue]
> Either
> that, or some nicer way of going about it...[/color]

What you _could_ do (although it's rather ugly) is

C2DArray &array = *(new C2DArray);
array[123][100] = 53;

of course you will need to dispose of it using the & syntax:

delete &array;

Victor