c++ - ptr->hello(); /* VERSUS */ (*ptr).hello();

Question

I was learning about C++ pointers and the -> operator seemed strange to me. Instead of ptr->hello(); one could write (*ptr).hello(); because it also seems to work, so I thought the former is just a more convenient way.

Is that the case or is there any difference?

Answer 1

The -> operator is just syntactic sugar because (*ptr).hello() is a PITA to type. In terms of the instructions generated at the ASM level, there's no difference. In fact, in some languages (D comes to mind), the compiler figures everything out based on type. If you do ptr.hello(), it just works, because the compiler knows that ptr is a pointer and doesn't have a hello() property, so you must mean (*ptr).hello().