[.net] c#: overloading operator=

Do you want to implicitly convert a string to your object type? If that's what you want, check out this link.

Actually, I want to allign an iterator-ish thing with the matching object in a collection.

Now that I think about it, an implicit cast overload won't work... because the MyClass that would get returned would completely overwrite the reference that you assign it to rather than use any other operator.

I don't think you're going to be able to do it using operator =

I think the closest thing you'll be able to come to is a property that accepts a string, and give it some easy to use name.

obj.Iterator = "hello";

public string Iterator{  set  {    // do whatever kind of iterator "find" code you want in order to set the internal iterator member.  }}

I don't think that would work, because the string could not know about the underlying collection.

Sorry, I edited my post while you were responding ;)

iterator.MoveTo("hello")

Quote:

Original post by Daniel Miller Actually, I want to allign an iterator-ish thing with the matching object in a collection.

That seems really nonintuitive for operator=. What if you *did* want the iterator to point at a different collection? I agree with the behavior of not overloading operator=. Stick with something like iterator.MoveTo("myObject"), iterator["myObject"], etc.