Don't know if you still need help with this, but... I just joined the forum and it seems like a ghost town.
The problem is with your code and not gcc. Your operator= method requires the argument to be a modifiable reference to a testClass (also sometimes called an l-value meaning it is allowed to appear on the left-hand side of an assignment). The return type of your operator* method is an r-value (meaning it is only allowed to appear on the right-hand side of an assignment).
It is good to become familiar with the proper signature and return-type of assignment statements. When dealing with objects, an assignment should declare its formal parameter to be a *constant* reference to an object (this allows the compiler to allow temporaries or other r-values as argument
. Also, an assignment typically returns a (modifiable) reference to an object, rather than a object value. This allows us to write statements like
So, to summarize, the declaration of your assignment operator should look like
Code:
testClass& operator= (testClass const& input)
{
a = input.a;
return *this;
}
If you are not familiar with the special pointer 'this', then I recommend that you look it up.
Hope this helps.
-Matthew-