Advanced C++ Topics

Automatic Memory Management

The purpose of operator= is to set an existing object equal to another object.
Use of = for construction is not always appropriate.
Example: Here, the pointer dept.receptionist is set to a random value. The operator will try to delete the receptionist causing an error.
```
Department dept = qc;
```
The copy constructor defines how to construct an object of a class as a copy of another object of the same class.
```
Department dept(qc)
```
If you don't define a copy constructor, then the compiler provides a version that simply copies the corresponding data fields of the existing object.
This version of the copy constructor is still inappropriate, leading to the same kind of errors as the default version of the assignment operator.