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Chapter 11: Problem 27

a. Explain carefully why no overloaded assignment operator is needed when the only data consists of built-in types. b. Same as part (a) for a copy constructor c. Same as part (a) for a destructor.

Short Answer

Expert verified
Answer: For a class with only built-in data members, the default assignment operator, copy constructor, and destructor work correctly. The default assignment operator and copy constructor properly handle copying the values of built-in types, and the default destructor is sufficient for managing the lifecycle of built-in data members without any additional resource management.

Step by step solution

01

Part a: Overloaded Assignment Operator

By default, when an assignment operation is performed between two objects of a class with built-in types, the built-in assignment operator works fine as each built-in type (like int, float, etc.) already have the default assignment behavior. Thus, there is no need to overload the assignment operator for such classes, as the default behavior will be adequate to copy the values properly.
02

Part b: Copy Constructor

A copy constructor is used when creating a new object as a copy of an existing object. When a class only contains built-in types, the default copy constructor will perform member-wise copying of each built-in data member. As built-in types have well-defined copy semantics, the default copy constructor works correctly in this case and there is no need to define a custom copy constructor for classes with only built-in data members.
03

Part c: Destructor

A destructor is a special member function of a class that executes whenever an object of it's class goes out of scope or is explicitly deleted. When a class only contains built-in types, there are no dynamically allocated resources or any other complex structures that need to be managed or released. Thus, the default destructor provided by the language will suffice and there is no need for a custom destructor.

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Most popular questions from this chapter

Give the definition for the constructor discussed at the end of the previous section. The constructor is to be added to the class Money in Display 11.5 The definition begins as follows: Money::Money(double amount) {

The following is the first line of the copy constructor definition for the class StringVar. The identifier StringVar occurs three times and means something slightly different each time. What does it mean in each of the three cases? StringVar::StringVar(const StringVar\& string_object)

The Pitfall section entitled "Leading Zeros in Number Constants" suggests that you write a short program to test whether a leading 0 will cause your compiler to interpret input numbers as base-eight numerals. Write such a program.

Answer these questions about destructors. a. What is a destructor and what must the name of a destructor be? b. When is a destructor called? c. What does a destructor actually do? d. What should a destructor do?

Change the class TemperatureList given in Display 11.10 by adding a member function called get_size, which takes no arguments and returns the number of temperatures on the list.
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