C++ Primer, Fifth Edition

9.2.5. Assignment and swap

The assignment-related operators, listed in Table 9.4 (overleaf) act on the entire container. The assignment operator replaces the entire range of elements in the left-hand container with copies of the elements from the right-hand operand:

c1 = c2;      // replace the contents of c1 with a copy of the elements in c2c1 = {a,b,c}; // after the assignment c1 has size 3

Table 9.4. Container Assignment Operations

After the first assignment, the left- and right-hand containers are equal. If the containers had been of unequal size, after the assignment both containers would have the size of the right-hand operand. After the ...