Operator = Overload with Const Variable in C++

Question

I was wondering if you guys could help me.

Here are my .h:

Class Doctor {
   const string name;
   public:
       Doctor();
       Doctor(string nam         


        

Answer 1

You are almost there. Few noteworthy points:

• The name should not be const qualified. A const cannot be modified, which is exactly what we want in the assignment operator.

• The C++ keyword is class and not Class as your code has it (it'll give you compile errors)

• As Michael Burr notes: "It should be noted though that if the class simply contains other classes that already properly support assignment (as in this case with a simple string member), the implicit, compiler-generated operator=() will work just fine." Here, in your case, the only member string has a proper op=. So explicitly defining is redundant.

• Meeh's solution is almost there. The only thing it doesn't talk about is self-assignment. Read FAQ 12.

• Assignment is one the Big Three member functions FAQ 27.10. Look it up. It says, requirement to implement either one of copy ctor, op= or the dtor usually implies that you'd need to implement the other two as well.

The corrected code sample should be something like this:

class Doctor {
  string name;
  public:
    Doctor& operator=(Doctor const& o) { 
         if (&o != this) name = o.name;
         return *this;
    }
  // ...
};