Question

Having construction in a form:

struct Node
{
Node():left_(nullptr), right_(nullptr)
{ }
int id_;
Node* left_;
Node* right_;
};

I would like to enable syntax:

Node parent;
Node child;
parent.right_ = child;

So in order to do so I need:

Node& operator=(Node* left, Node right);

but I’m getting msg that operator= has to be a member fnc; Is there any way to circumvent this restriction?

Answer 1

An automatic conversion from value to pointer creates lots of possibilites to make your code hard to understand.

If you still want to do it you can provide a conversion operator on your Node class:

operator Node* () { return this; }