kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Cirilo Bernardo <cirilo_bernardo@xxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
> From: Lorenzo Marcantonio <l.marcantonio@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: Kicad Developers <kicad-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: 
> Sent: Friday, August 3, 2012 8:45 PM
> Subject: Re: [Kicad-developers] operator == on PCB_PLOT_PARAMS
> 
> On Fri, Aug 03, 2012 at 12:39:52PM +0200, Lorenzo Marcantonio wrote:
>>  Why is the operator definition needed? If the semantic is a field-by-field 
> comparison, it should get a default, like for assigment (it doesn't, tried 
> it:P)
> 
> Oops found the answer... there is no default == operator in C++ :P:P (strange, 
> they got default = but not default ==)
> 
> -- 
> Lorenzo Marcantonio
> Logos Srl
> 

It's very simple; for an '=' operator you only need to copy a known amount of memory to provide a default operator which is useful in almost 100% of cases.  There is no such generalization possible for the equivalence operator if a parameter is anything more than a single CPU register.  For example, consider the quaternion represented by a structure containing 4 floats.  When you check for the equivalence of the quaternions you only need to check 3 of those floats; if the quaternions are not normalized then you cannot even directly compare the 3 values to determine if the quaternions are equivalent.  In my experience this situation is extremely common so I am not surprised that there is no default '==' operator.

- Cirilo