Re: What do you call this construct?

From:

"Victor Bazarov" <v.Abazarov@comAcast.net>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.c++

Date:

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 15:08:46 -0500

Message-ID:

<es234f$9bl$1@news.datemas.de>

joe wrote:

Curious if this type of construct has a name, or is a recognized
design pattern:

class Function
{
public:
Function() { // do loads of work here in the Constructor, store result
in m_result }

operator double() { return m_result;} //Automatic Type Conversion

private:
double m_result;
};

with the expected simple usage:

double value = Function();

Is there some recognized caveat to the above? I don't see it used
very often.

What's the advantage of that class implementation over, say,

    double Function() {
        double _result;
        // do loads of work here, store the result in _result
        return _result;
    }

? I don't see any in your code. And the syntax looks pretty much
like a function call, so it would be very confusing to somebody
reading the code to learn that 'Function' is not a function at all.

V
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