C++ is there a difference between dereferencing and using dot operator, vs using the arrow operator [duplicate]

Question

Let's say I have the following variable:

MyObject* obj = ...;

If this object has the field foo, there are two ways of accessing it:

1. obj->foo
2. (*obj).foo

Are there any differences between using one method over the other. Or is the first method just syntactic sugar for the second?

I was thinking maybe the first one could cause the copy constructor of the object to be called since it is now holding onto the value.

Answer 1

There is no difference when obj is a pointer.

If obj is an object of some class, obj->foo will call operator->() and (*obj).foo will call operator*(). You could in theory overload these to do totally different behavior, but that would be a very badly designed class.