Why don't C++ compilers define operator== and operator!=?

Question

I am a big fan of letting the compiler do as much work for you as possible. When writing a simple class the compiler can give you the following for 'free':

• A default (empty) constructor
• A copy constructor
• A destructor
• An assignment operator (operator=)

But it cannot seem to give you any comparison operators - such as operator== or operator!=. For example:

class foo
{
public:
    std::string str_;
    int n_;
};

foo f1;        // Works
foo f2(f1);    // Works
foo f3;
f3 = f2;       // Works

if (f3 == f2)  // Fails
{ }

if (f3 != f2)  // Fails
{ }

Is there a good reason for this? Why would performing a member-by-member comparison be a problem? Obviously if the class allocates memory then you'd want to be careful, but for a simple class surely the compiler could do this for you?

Answer 1

The compiler wouldn't know whether you wanted a pointer comparison or a deep (internal) comparison.

It's safer to just not implement it and let the programmer do that themselves. Then they can make all the assumptions they like.

Answer 2

The argument that if the compiler can provide a default copy constructor, it should be able to provide a similar default operator==() makes a certain amount of sense. I think that the reason for the decision not to provide a compiler-generated default for this operator can be guessed by what Stroustrup said about the default copy constructor in "The Design and Evolution of C++" (Section 11.4.1 - Control of Copying):

I personally consider it unfortunate that copy operations are defined by default and I prohibit copying of objects of many of my classes. However, C++ inherited its default assignment and copy constructors from C, and they are frequently used.

So instead of "why doesn't C++ have a default operator==()?", the question should have been "why does C++ have a default assignment and copy constructor?", with the answer being those items were included reluctantly by Stroustrup for backwards compatibility with C (probably the cause of most of C++'s warts, but also probably the primary reason for C++'s popularity).

For my own purposes, in my IDE the snippet I use for new classes contains declarations for a private assignment operator and copy constructor so that when I gen up a new class I get no default assignment and copy operations - I have to explicitly remove the declaration of those operations from the private: section if I want the compiler to be able to generate them for me.

Answer 3

Even in C++20, the compiler still won't implicitly generate operator== for you

struct foo
{
    std::string str;
    int n;
};

assert(foo{"Anton", 1} == foo{"Anton", 1}); // ill-formed

But you will gain the ability to explicitly default == since C++20:

struct foo
{
    std::string str;
    int n;

    // either member form
    bool operator==(foo const&) const = default;
    // ... or friend form
    friend bool operator==(foo const&, foo const&) = default;
};

Defaulting == does member-wise == (in the same way that the default copy constructor does member-wise copy construction). The new rules also provide the expected relationship between == and !=. For instance, with the declaration above, I can write both:

assert(foo{"Anton", 1} == foo{"Anton", 1}); // ok!
assert(foo{"Anton", 1} != foo{"Anton", 2}); // ok!

This specific feature (defaulting operator== and symmetry between == and !=) comes from one proposal that was part of the broader language feature that is operator<=>.

Answer 4

IMHO, there is no "good" reason. The reason there are so many people that agree with this design decision is because they did not learn to master the power of value-based semantics. People need to write a lot of custom copy constructor, comparison operators and destructors because they use raw pointers in their implementation.

When using appropriate smart pointers (like std::shared_ptr), the default copy constructor is usually fine and the obvious implementation of the hypothetical default comparison operator would be as fine.

Answer 5

It's answered C++ didn't do == because C didn't, and here is why C provides only default = but no == at first place. C wanted to keep it simple: C implemented = by memcpy; however, == cannot be implemented by memcmp due to padding. Because padding is not initialized, memcmp says they are different even though they are the same. The same problem exists for empty class: memcmp says they are different because size of empty classes are not zero. It can be seen from above that implementing == is more complicated than implementing = in C. Some code example regarding this. Your correction is appreciated if I'm wrong.

Answer 6

In this video Alex Stepanov, the creator of STL addresses this very question at about 13:00. To summarize, having watched the evolution of C++ he argues that:

• It's unfortunate that == and != are not implicitly declared (and Bjarne agrees with him). A correct language should have those things ready for you (he goes further on to suggest you should not be able to define a != that breaks the semantics of ==)
• The reason this is the case has its roots (as many of C++ problems) in C. There, the assignment operator is implicitly defined with bit by bit assignment but that wouldn't work for ==. A more detailed explanation can be found in this article from Bjarne Stroustrup.
• In the follow up question Why then wasn't a member by member comparison used he says an amazing thing : C was kind of a homegrown language and the guy implementing these stuff for Ritchie told him he found this to be hard to implement!

He then says that in the (distant) future == and != will be implicitly generated.

Answer 7

C++20 provides a way to easily implement a default comparison operator.

Example from cppreference.com:

class Point {
    int x;
    int y;
public:
    auto operator<=>(const Point&) const = default;
    // ... non-comparison functions ...
};

// compiler implicitly declares operator== and all four relational operators work
Point pt1, pt2;
if (pt1 == pt2) { /*...*/ } // ok, calls implicit Point::operator==
std::set<Point> s; // ok
s.insert(pt1); // ok
if (pt1 <= pt2) { /*...*/ } // ok, makes only a single call to Point::operator<=>

Answer 8

It is not possible to define default ==, but you can define default != via == which you usually should define yourselves. For this you should do following things:

#include <utility>
using namespace std::rel_ops;
...

class FooClass
{
public:
  bool operator== (const FooClass& other) const {
  // ...
  }
};

You can see http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/std/utility/rel_ops/ for details.

In addition if you define operator< , operators for <=, >, >= can be deduced from it when using std::rel_ops.

But you should be careful when you use std::rel_ops because comparison operators can be deduced for the types you are not expected for.

More preferred way to deduce related operator from basic one is to use boost::operators.

The approach used in boost is better because it define the usage of operator for the class you only want, not for all classes in scope.

You can also generate "+" from "+=", - from "-=", etc... (see full list here)

Answer 9

C++0x has had a proposal for default functions, so you could say default operator==; We've learnt that it helps to make these things explicit.

Answer 10

Conceptually it is not easy to define equality. Even for POD data, one could argue that even if the fields are the same, but it is a different object (at a different address) it is not necessarily equal. This actually depends on the usage of the operator. Unfortunately your compiler is not psychic and cannot infer that.

Besides this, default functions are excellent ways to shoot oneself in the foot. The defaults you describe are basically there to keep compatibility with POD structs. They do however cause more than enough havoc with developers forgetting about them, or the semantics of the default implementations.

Answer 11

Just so that the answers to this question remains complete as the time passes by: since C++20 it can be automatically generated with command auto operator<=>(const foo&) const = default;

It will generate all the operators: ==, !=, <, <=, >, and >=, see https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/default_comparisons for details.

Due to operator's look <=>, it is called a spaceship operator. Also see Why do we need the spaceship <=> operator in C++?.

EDIT: also in C++11 a pretty neat substitute for that is available with std::tie see https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/utility/tuple/tie for a complete code example with bool operator<(…). The interesting part, changed to work with == is:

#include <tuple>

struct S {
………
bool operator==(const S& rhs) const
    {
        // compares n to rhs.n,
        // then s to rhs.s,
        // then d to rhs.d
        return std::tie(n, s, d) == std::tie(rhs.n, rhs.s, rhs.d);
    }
};

std::tie works with all comparison operators, and is completely optimized away by the compiler.

Answer 12

Is there a good reason for this? Why would performing a member-by-member comparison be a problem?

It may not be a problem functionally, but in terms of performance, default member-by-member comparison is liable to be more sub-optimal than default member-by-member assignment/copying. Unlike order of assignment, order of comparison impacts performance because the first unequal member implies the rest can be skipped. So if there are some members that are usually equal you want to compare them last, and the compiler doesn't know which members are more likely to be equal.

Consider this example, where verboseDescription is a long string selected from a relatively small set of possible weather descriptions.

class LocalWeatherRecord {
    std::string verboseDescription;
    std::tm date;
    bool operator==(const LocalWeatherRecord& other){
        return date==other.date
            && verboseDescription==other.verboseDescription;
    // The above makes a lot more sense than
     // return verboseDescription==other.verboseDescription
     //     && date==other.date;
    // because some verboseDescriptions are liable to be same/similar
    }
}

(Of course the compiler would be entitled to disregard the order of comparisons if it recognizes that they have no side-effects, but presumably it would still take its que from the source code where it doesn't have better information of its own.)

Answer 13

I agree, for POD type classes then the compiler could do it for you. However what you might consider simple the compiler might get wrong. So it is better to let the programmer do it.

I did have a POD case once where two of the fields were unique - so a comparison would never be considered true. However the comparison I needed only ever compared on the payload - something the compiler would never understand or could ever figure out on it's own.

Besides - they don't take long to write do they?!