The Object-Oriented Thought Process, Fourth Edition

Object Operations

Some of the most basic operations in programming become more complicated when you’re dealing with complex data structures and objects. For example, when you want to copy or compare primitive data types, the process is quite straightforward. However, copying and comparing objects is not quite as simple. On page 34 of his book Effective C++, Scott Meyers devotes an entire section to copying and assigning objects.

Classes and References

The problem with complex data structures and objects is that they might contain references. Simply making a copy of the reference does not copy the data structures or the object that it references. In the same vein, when comparing objects, simply comparing a pointer to another pointer only compares ...