Question

I have a relationship of composition between class A and B,

class A
{
    A(); //default constructor  //EDIT
    A(const A &mA); // copy constructor //EDIT
    virtual ~A();
};


class B
{
B(A *pA); //constructor
B(const B &mB) //copy constructor
virtual ~B(); //EDIT: destructor to eliminate mA and to build the composition
A* mA;
};

Could I write the copy constructor in this manner:

B(const B &mB, A *pA)

I need it to keep up the composition also between the copied objects.
Is it wrong? Does it exist a better solution?
Thank you

EDIT: I’ll try to explain me better. I want a copy of the object mB and the object mA. But if in the copy constructor I had writen mA =mB.mA I would copy the adress to the original object mA. So I think I need a deep copy not an swallow copy. My confusion arise because now, from the main, first I copy the object mA and then I copy mB. Doing that, I think I need to assign the copied object mA with an external function like

foo(A *pA)

Otherwise I could solve the problem if I could doing a deep copy of mB. Is this called a deep copy?

P.S.
A and B are abstract classes

Answer 1

No. By definition, the copy constructor can not have a signature like the one you described. Here are some valid signatures for copy constructors:

B(const B &);
B(B &);   // Thanks Oli!

Why do you need it? You can access the mA member inside the copy constructor by doing something like this (I might have made some syntax errors):

B::B(const B & original)
{
    mA = original.mA;
}