Assignment and Copy Constructors in C++ Classes [SOLVED]

[twitchyliquid64]

Hi all,

Im building a variant class that I want to make work, but Im running into compiler issues; issues that highlight that I have no idea what is going on under the hood for operators in C++.

My class looks something like:

class Variant
{
public:
    //Constructors
    Variant(void) : type(VAR_INTTYPE), int64value(0), databuffsize(0), databuff((char*)0) {}
    Variant(int);
    Variant(long long);
    Variant(double);
    Variant(const char* in);
    Variant(char* in);
    Variant(Variant & in);//Copy Constructor
    ~Variant();//Destructor


    //Operators
    Variant& operator= (Variant&);
    Variant& operator= (Variant);
    //Other irrelvant code...
}

And Im trying to do things like:

Variant test;
int main()
{  
    test = Variant(20); //btw, I have no intention of implementing assignment ops for primitive types for various reasons
    Variant lol(7);
    lol = test;
    return 0;
}

In GCC (mingw) this is throwing errors like:

error: no matching function to call for 'Variant::Variant(Variant)'

Any ideas what constructors or operators I am missing? I have looked around and cannot find any solution to my problem.

Thanks in advance.

Edited April 18, 2012 by twitchyliquid64

[Valik]

Copy constructor is not const correct. Also, did you actually implement the copy constructor or just declare it? If you did declare it in a separate file you didn't make it inline, did you?

[twitchyliquid64]

Copy constructor is not const correct. Also, did you actually implement the copy constructor or just declare it? If you did declare it in a separate file you didn't make it inline, did you?

all the methods listed there are fully implemented in the variant.cpp file.

I'm pretty sure i inlined it ... is that bad? file size isn't an issue.

what do you mean by not const correct? do you mean i need a constructor with a const variant reference as the parameter?

[Richard Robertson]

Copy constructor is name(const &name)

[Kip]

Instead of overloading the assigment operator twice:

Variant& operator= (Variant&);
    Variant& operator= (Variant);

I would do this:

Variant const& operator=(const Variant&);

[Richard Robertson]

Why would you force a const return? What if I wanted to do something like (a = .change()?

Edited April 17, 2012 by Richard Robertson

[Valik]

If you inline a function in a CPP file then it cannot be seen outside that CPP file. It must either be inlined in the header file or you must remove the inline flag in the CPP file.

[twitchyliquid64]

Thanks everyone for your help. In the end the problem was that my copy constructor needed to accept a const reference rather than just a reference.

[Richard Robertson]

Copy constructor is name(const &name)