Question

Here is my code for my logical comparison operator (==) overloaded. I use this to check if two strings are identical in size and content. It should return false otherwise.

 bool MyString::operator==(const MyString& other)const
 {
    if(other.Size == this->Size)
    {
        for(int i = 0; i < this->Size+1; i++)
        {
            if(&other == this)                          
                  return true;            
        }
    }
    else
        return false;
 }

When I ran valgrind it told me warning control reaches end of non-void function. Any suggestions on how to fix this issue and what I could do to better the code?

Answer 1

When control reaches the end of your for loop, you immediately get to the end of the function without returning a value.

It looks to me like you have the logic in your for loop munged anyway — it’s comparing the address of the other item to this. While it’s sort of okay to do that, you only need to do it once, not in a loop.

In the loop, you undoubtedly want to compare the characters in the string, not the addresses of the objects.

Edit:

A typical implementation would be something on this general order:

class MyString { 
    char *data;
    size_t length;
public:
    // ...
    bool operator==(MyString const &other) const {
        if (length != other.length)
            return false;
        for (int i=0; i<length; i++)
            if (data[i] != other.data[i]) // If we see any inequality
                return false;             //     they're not equal
        return true;                      // all equal, so the strings are equal.
    }
};