C++: A Dialog Programming with the C++ Standard Library

Concrete Data Types

While different classes vary considerably in the facilities that they provide, there are significant benefits to a class whose objects behave like those of native types. As I've just mentioned, such a class is called a concrete data type. To make a class a concrete data type, we must define certain member functions that allow creation, copying, and deletion to behave as with a native variable.

Susan wanted to see a chart illustrating the correspondence between what the compiler does for a native type and what we have to do to make a type a concrete data type. Of course, I complied with her request (see Figure 6.2).

Figure 6.2. Comparison between native and user-defined types

Because the member functions listed in that chart ...