Message-Id: <199704160452.AAA03266@hcst.net> From: "Bryan Murphy" To: Subject: Re: Operator == Implementation Question Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 00:49:01 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Precedence: bulk >> I have a question about operator== for classes. What is the best method >> for implementing that? Currently, I have a string called name, and each >> object has an individual name. I just use that for comparison. >> >> operator == (const OBJECT &object) >> { >> return (this == &object); >> }; >> >> >This last one won't work. (You can't take the address of a reference >variable.) Here is an example program of what I think you want to do: Why not? That seems a little illogical to me, afterall, refernces ARE referring to a specific location in memory. > bool operator==(const mystringtype& a) > { > return (strcmp(this->string, a.string) == 0); > } >}; // end of class mystringtype Actually, that is exactly what it does, and exactly what I don't want it to do. I don't want to give every object in memory an Identifier or a specific name. There has to be a way to check to see if their equal w/o doing something like that. The whole reason is that I want multiple copies of the exact same object to be stored in a list, yet I want to be able to tell when I'm referring to one object specifically, and not the others. I'd rather not use a unique ID or name, because as I said before, I want them to be exact copies.