Overloading the assignment operator, right now!

[Oskar Linde]

Derek Parnell wrote:
> On Thu, 14 Sep 2006 17:30:29 +0300, Georg Wrede wrote:
> 
>> Overloading of the assignment operator is not allowed in D.
>>
>> But no problem, we can do it right now, in spite of it.
> 
> I'm happy to not have the assignment operator overloaded in D.

For classes I agree. Overloading reference assignment doesn't make much 
sense. For structs on the other hand, assignment means (shallow) copying 
and being able to define that behavior would be useful.

> 
> I'm unhappy that D doesn't have a copy operator. If it did, I'd like to
> overload that!

But in a way it does have one such operator. I am thinking about []=.

struct Matrix {
	T* ptr;
	size_t w,h;
	...
	Matrix opSliceAssign(Matrix b) {...}
}

Matrix a,b;
...

a=b;   // Makes a refer to the same memory as b
a[]=b; // Copies the contents of b to a

/Oskar