I write a compare function in C++ that should dereference only when T is of pointer type:

template<class T> bool compare(const T& left, const T& right)
 {
 if (is_pointer<T>::value)
   return *left <= *right;
 return left <= right;
 }

But it tries to dereference when T is int:

invalid type argument of unary ‘*’ (have ‘int’)