(->) arrow operator and (.) dot operator , class pointer

Question

In C++ we know that for a pointer of class we use (->) arrow operator to access the members of that class like here:

#include 
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Answer 1

After...

MyClass* p = new myclass[10];

...p is a pointer to an array of MyClass objects. The "pointer to an array" thing has to be delt with first. Whenever you have a pointer to an array, p[n] effectively gives you a reference to the nth element in the array, so you effectively have a MyClass&. That's why . is then needed to access MyClass members ala p[n].member, and why the pointer-specific -> notation is erroneous in this case....

Note that p->member (for any member) is still valid and equivalent to p[0].member, so you can only use it for accessing the first element in the array. I strongly recommend you don't use it at all whenever you're in a programmatic context where 'p' is known to be pointer to the array, as it hides the fact that p is an array. Sometimes though you may create another pointer - say q - with the purpose of refering to a single array element - may or may not be [0] - and in those situation's it's fair to use q->member. Variables like q may be used for iteration over the array too. But, sometime you're going to need to delete[] p; - so you won't tend to change p beforehands... you don't want to lose track of the p[0] address or delete[] p; will be Undefined Behaviour (which is allowed to be implementation defined and happens to be on Windows if p still points within the array, but won't be portable).