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Asked: 2026-05-31T03:59:39+00:00

while googling for how to overload operator = I found that some examples return

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while googling for how to overload operator = I found that some examples
return value http://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial/operator_overloading.html
, while a friend of mine that is C++ guru long time ago told me to return reference. Also for example when I look at the STL source I saw stuff like:

  vector&
  operator=(const vector& __x);

so what is the correct way to do it ?

BTW if you are curious my friend told me that the reason why to return ref is beause built in types return l-value.

int x;
(x = 3) += 2;
// x is now 5.
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Other than special cases where you really, really know what you’re doing, it should return either class& or void. (And most of the time, returning void should just be a placeholder for “I’m being lazy and haven’t gotten around to making sure that returning class& makes sense”)

    Returning class is a bad idea because it wastes time and memory (it makes a copy!) in the normal case where the user doesn’t use the return value, and will thoroughly mislead a user who actually does use the return value (and still waste time making copies).

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