Dereferencing Function Pointers

I''ve always read that if you had a function pointer: void (*Blah)(); You had to call it by dereferencing the pointer first: (*Blah)(); However, I''ve noticed that in MSVC++ 6.0 my code compiles and runs fine just doing Blah(); Also, when initializing a function pointer, I always read that you had to explicitly reference the function: void (*Blah)() = &SomeFunction But in MSVC++ 6.0 I am able to do void (*Blah)() = SomeFunction; Are these actually standard, or are they just microsofts doing? I like the implicit refrencing and dereferencing, but I don''t want to do it if it won''t compile on other compilers. Thanks!