STL / Illegal indirection error

[misterPatch]

I'm creating a firework display using directX and getting a compiler error that I can't quite understand why.

All my firework types, rockets, roman candles, etc. inherit from the ParticleEmitter class and have update and render methods and all work fine.
My FireworkDisplay class has a vector of pointers to derived instances and I want to iterate over the vector updating all the active fireworks.

void FireworkDisplay::update()
{
	for(std::vector<ParticleEmitter*>::iterator pF(fireworks_.begin()); pF != fireworks_.end(); ++pF)
	{
		*(*pF) ->update();
	}
}

void FireworkDisplay::render()
{
	for(std::vector<ParticleEmitter*>::iterator pF(fireworks_.begin()); pF != fireworks_.end(); ++pF)
	{
		*(*pF) ->render();
	}
}

For the line *(*pF) ->update(); i get a dropdown list of my firework's methods so I don't get why i'm getting error C2100: illegal indirection for those lines. Any advice on how to get around this would be greatly appreciated, in my mind this code should be perfectly fine. Thanks.

[Disch]

For the line *(*pF) ->update(); i get a dropdown list of my firework's methods

pF is a an iterator to a ParticleEmitter*
therefore
(*pF) is a ParticleEmitter*
therefore
(*pF)->render(); properly called ParticleEmitter::render

So the additonal * serves no purpose. Get rid of it

[guestgulkan]

Give that we have a vector of pointers vector<ParticleEmitter*> and an iterator to this vector, then
*pF will return a pointer to ParticleEmitter ParticleEmitter*.
We then want to call a function from the ParticleEmitter object through this pointer so we will have:
(*pF) ->render()



What you have written is *(*pF) ->render() which because of operator precedence is the same as *((*pF) ->render())which would call the function and then try to dereference the return value of the function which would only work if the return from the render function is a pointer.

[misterPatch]

Makes perfect sense, thankyou for the swift response.