Question

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behaviour of the implicit copy constructor / assignment operator
C++ – conditions for automatic generation of default ctor, copy ctor,and default assignment operator?

Is it true that the overloaded assignment operator is always provided by the C++ compiler? What are the cases in which it is not provided by the c++ compiler?

Answer 1

An Assignment/Copy Assignment(=) operator is provided by any C++ compiler implicitly unless you have const or reference members in your class.

In case of const member compiler cannot provide = because that would break the contract of not modifying const member after initialization.

In case of reference member compiler does not provide = because it leaves it to the user of the class to decide the appropriate behavior.