Strictly speaking, the result of a copy assignment operator doesn’t need to return a reference, though to mimic the default behavior the C++ compiler uses, it should return a non-const reference to the object that is assigned to (an implicitly generated copy assignment operator will return a non-const reference – C++03: 12.8/10). I’ve seen a … Read more
I advocated for having assignments return the value assigned rather than unit. Martin and I went back and forth on it, but his argument was that putting a value on the stack just to pop it off 95% of the time was a waste of byte-codes and have a negative impact on performance.
Reason The operators &&= and ||= are not available on Java because for most of the developers these operators are: error-prone useless Example for &&= If Java allowed &&= operator, then that code: bool isOk = true; //becomes false when at least a function returns false isOK &&= f1(); isOK &&= f2(); //we may expect … Read more
The |= is a compound assignment operator (JLS 15.26.2) for the boolean logical operator | (JLS 15.22.2); not to be confused with the conditional-or || (JLS 15.24). There are also &= and ^= corresponding to the compound assignment version of the boolean logical & and ^ respectively. In other words, for boolean b1, b2, these … Read more
The way you describe it is absolutely not possible. Assignment to a name is a fundamental feature of Python and no hooks have been provided to change its behavior. However, assignment to a member in a class instance can be controlled as you want, by overriding .__setattr__(). class MyClass(object): def __init__(self, x): self.x = x … Read more
You can explicitly call constructors and assignment operators: class Base { //… public: Base(const Base&) { /*…*/ } Base& operator=(const Base&) { /*…*/ } }; class Derived : public Base { int additional_; public: Derived(const Derived& d) : Base(d) // dispatch to base copy constructor , additional_(d.additional_) { } Derived& operator=(const Derived& d) { Base::operator=(d); … Read more
It’s not deprecated and is unlikely to be. It’s the standard way to, for example, make part of one array or object mirror changes made to another, instead of copying the existing data. It’s called assignment by reference, which, to quote the manual, “means that both variables end up pointing at the same data, and … Read more
From here: The operators <- and = assign into the environment in which they are evaluated. The operator <- can be used anywhere, whereas the operator = is only allowed at the top level (e.g., in the complete expression typed at the command prompt) or as one of the subexpressions in a braced list of … Read more
Yes, it’s subassignment in R using <- (or = or ->) that makes a copy of the whole object. You can trace that using tracemem(DT) and .Internal(inspect(DT)), as below. The data.table features := and set() assign by reference to whatever object they are passed. So if that object was previously copied (by a subassigning <- … Read more
The difference in assignment operators is clearer when you use them to set an argument value in a function call. For example: median(x = 1:10) x ## Error: object ‘x’ not found In this case, x is declared within the scope of the function, so it does not exist in the user workspace. median(x <- … Read more