C++ Primer, Fifth Edition

13.1.2. The Copy-Assignment Operator

Just as a class controls how objects of that class are initialized, it also controls how objects of its class are assigned:

Sales_data trans, accum;trans = accum; // uses the Sales_data copy-assignment operator

As with the copy constructor, the compiler synthesizes a copy-assignment operator if the class does not define its own.

Introducing Overloaded Assignment

Before we look at the synthesized assignment operator, we need to know a bit about overloaded operators, which we cover in detail in Chapter 14.

Overloaded operators are functions that have the name operator followed by the symbol for the operator ...