Lesson 12 - Assignment operator
In the previous lesson, Copy Constructors in C++, we were dealing with C++ copy constructors. In today's C++ tutorial, we're going to look at the assignment operator, which is another basic operation we're going to overload.
What's the assignment operator? It's the equals symbol we regularly use. For
example, the code x = 4 + 5
calls the assignment operator on the
x
object (if it's an object). Let's try to create two warriors,
then we'll to overwrite one with the other:
Warrior a(100, 8, 5, die); Warrior b(100, 9, 6, die); a = b;
The compiler reports an error that the "equals" operator isn't defined. Specifically (for Visual Studio), the message looks like this:
error C2280: 'Warrior &Warrior::operator =(const Warrior &)': attempting to reference a deleted function note: compiler has generated 'Warrior::operator =' here
We usually want to be able to assign a variable to another variable of the same type. Unlike in higher programming languages, we have to take care of this in C++ ourselves (yes, again).
The Assignment Operator
First, let's try to think logically about the declaration. The method name is
obvious - the operator
keyword followed by the equals symbol. What
about parameters? We want to take another instance and copy its value. At the
same time we assume that
...End of the preview...

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