I have class of worker, each worker has an array of pointers to co workers that are also workers.

I want to overload = operator so I will be able to do the following: *worker1 = *worker2.

This opertion will add worker2 to array of coworkers of worker1, and worker1 to array of coworkers of worker2. (worker1, worker2 are pointers).

Relevant Worker class structure:

class Worker{
private:
Worker** coWorkers
}

The function that I have tried to implement:

const Worker& Worker::operator =(const Worker& other){

}

The problem is the "other" is const but "coWorkers" is not const so I can't do the following:

this->coWorkers[last] = &other;

How I can solve this problem?

CodePudding user response：

First of all modern C way to do so use std::vector or std::list instead of Worker** coWorkers. I think in your case list is preferred because you don't know the exact number of coworkers during initialization, as well as container i.e. list of co-workers can be changed in time i.e. new coworkers added and someone rotated, switch company etc.

You can push back a worker to the list as shown in example bellow:

#include <list>
#include <string>
#include <iostream>

class Worker {
public:
  typedef std::list< Worker >::const_iterator const_iterator;
  explicit Worker(const std::string& name):
    name_(name)
  {}
  Worker& operator =(const Worker& coWorker)
  {
    coWorkers_.push_back(coWorker);
    return *this;  
  }
  const_iterator begin() const {
    return coWorkers_.cbegin();
  }
  const_iterator end() const {
    return coWorkers_.cend();
  }
  const std::string& name() const {
    return name_;
  }
private:
  std::string name_;
  std::list< Worker > coWorkers_;
};

int main(int argc, const char** argv) 
{    
  Worker boss("Cesar");
  boss  = Worker("Augustus");
  boss  = Worker("Antonius");
  boss  = Worker("Brutus");

  std::cout << boss.name() << std::endl; 
  for(auto i: boss) {
    std::cout << i.name() << std::endl; 
  }
}

Check output