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Automatic Memory Management

• The remedy is to overload the operator= to make the assignment safe by deleting the only Employee object, and making a copy of the new Employee object.

  Department& Department::operator=(const Department& b)
  {
     if (this != & b)
     {
        name = b.name;
        delete receptionist;
        if (b.receptionist == NULL)
           receptionist == NULL;
        else
           receptionist = new Employee(b.receptionist->get_name(),
              b.receptionist->get_salary());
      }
      return *this;
  }
  

• Unlike most other operators, the operator= must be a member function.
• Special care must be taken to avoid a destructive "self-assignment."
• A return by reference is required to handle chaining of assignments, such as.

  z = y = x;
  

• You should always overload the = operator if your class has data fields that are pointers, and a simple copy of objects leads to dangerous shared pointers.

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