Re: AW: AW: Binaries for Windows NT

[David Philippi]

On Friday 27 September 2002 15:00, Ingo Ruhnke wrote:
> Sure? I don't think so, that would allow things like:
>  (a = b) = c;
> Which the normal operator=() for int and floats does not allow.

Did you try? I guess not since his is legal code! I was also astonished but 
that's the way the built in operator= works - and the built in behaviour 
should be kept whenever possible while overloading operators.
Just try something like:

int foo, bar;
(foo = bar = 7) = 8;
cout << foo << " " << bar << endl;

This will give you "8 7". Probably it's done as a performance improvement. 
operator= shall return the new value to allow

foo = bar = baz = value;

and if you just do an assignment the compiler may optimize the return value 
away but with a reference as return value this is much less work and thereby 
faster to compile I guess. There may also be cases where an unrequired copy 
would be made and then thrown away which would be most unfortunate. 

C++ is a language you may always learn more about. For example: do you know 
what an anonymous union is? I've found it by searching the right page in a 
book and got curious. ;-)

Bye David