Question

From what I understand I’m able to “disable” copying and assigning to my objects by defining private copy constructor and assignment operator:

class MyClass
{
private:
    MyClass(const MyClass& srcMyClass);
    MyClass& operator=(const MyClass& srcMyClass);
}

But what’s the usage of this?
Is it considered a bad practice?

I would appreciate if you could describe the situation, in which it would be reasonable / useful to “disable” assignment and copy constructor in this way.

Answer 1

It’s useful when it doesn’t make sense for your object to be copied. It is definitely not considered bad practice.

For instance, if you have a class that represents a network connection, it’s not meaningful to copy that object. Another time you may want a class to be noncopyable is if you had a class representing one player in a multiplayer game. Both these classes represent things that can’t be copied in the real world, or that don’t make sense to copy (a person, a connection).

Also, if you are trying to implement a Singleton, it’s standard procedure to make the objects non-copyable.