Arrow Operator vs. Dot Operator [closed]

The ‘arrow’ operator is syntactic sugar. bar->member is the same as (*bar).member. One reason for the difference is maintainability. With the arrow operator distinct from the dot operator, it becomes much easier to keep track of which variables are pointers and which are not. It might be possible to always use . and have the compiler try to do the right thing, but I doubt that would make the language simpler. Trusting the compiler to interpret what you meant instead of what you literally wrote usually turns out badly.

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