Question

I have code like this:

class Base
{
public:
  void operator = (const Base& base_)
  {
  }
};

class Child : public Base
{
public:

};

void func()
{
  const Base base;
  Child child;
  child = base;
}

My question is: since Child derives from Base (hence it should inherit Base’s operator= ), how come when the statement

child = base;

is executed, I get a compiler error like this:

>.\main.cpp(78) : error C2679: binary '=' : no operator found which takes a right-hand operand of type 'const Base' (or there is no acceptable conversion)
1>        .\main.cpp(69): could be 'Child &Child::operator =(const Child &)'
1>        while trying to match the argument list '(Child, const Base)'

The behavior that I want is for the Child class to recognize that it’s being assigned a Base class, and just “automatically” call the its parent’s operator=.

Once I added this code to the Child class

void operator = (const Base& base_)
{
  Base::operator=(base_);
}

then everything compiled fine. Though I dont think this would be good because if I have like 5 different classes that inherit from Base, then I have to repeat the same code in every single derived class.

NOTE: My intention for copying the Base to Child is to simply copying the members that are common to both Base and Child (which would be all the members of Base). Even after reading all of the answers below, I really don’t see why C++ doesn’t allow one to do this, especially if there’s an explicit operator= defined in the Base class.

Answer 1

The standard provides the reason for your specific question in 12.8/10 “Copying class objects” (emphasis added):

Because a copy assignment operator is implicitly declared for a class if not declared by the user, a base class copy assignment operator is always hidden by the copy assignment operator of a derived class (13.5.3).

So since there’s an implicitly declared operator=(const Child&) when the compiler is performing the name lookup/overload resolution for a Child::operator=(), the Base class’s function signature is never even considered (it’s hidden).