One is not taking the reference. When writing ptr->foo() the ref is temporary, not accessible and will be cleaned up when the method call on the raw ptr finishe

One is not taking the reference. When writing ptr->foo() the ref is temporary, not accessible and will be cleaned up when the method call on the raw ptr finishes. Taking the reference would be "auto foo = ptr.operator->()". This could be forbidden by not providing op->, and instead having an apply function which takes a method name and the parameters. That would be safer, but probably too much effort for little gain.