How to make chains of calls to methods of one class?

Question

C++ / C#

Good afternoon!
I want to make it so that the class methods can be called in a chain, to the perimeter:

MyClass * myClass = new MyClass();
myClass->summ(10).retract(4).div(2).cast(1);
......
......
delete myClass;

Of course, for this it is enough that each method returns an instance of the class, and this is the question - what to return and why?

MyClass &summ(int) {  return *this; }
// ИЛИ
MyClass *summ(int) {  return this; }

As you can see, you can return either a reference or a pointer.
What will be the most correct in this case and why?
PS The copy constructor is rather complicated.

Answer 1

you can return either a reference or a pointer.
What will be the most correct in this case and why?

You want to write myClass->summ(10).retract(4).div(2).cast(1);- return the link, you want myClass->summ(10)->retract(4)->div(2)->cast(1);- return the pointer. Otherwise, there is no difference.
It doesn't matter at all if you're not going to return an object instead of a reference or a pointer.