How Can An Entire Object be Compared to a Single Constant?

[jrahhali]

This question actually originates from a Visual Basic course I'm taking, but I think it can be answered here.

Dim WhichButtonDialogResult As DialogResult

WhichButtonDialogResult = MessageBox.Show(bunch of arguments with Yes and No buttons)

If WhichButtonDialogResult = DialogResult.Yes Then
   'Code...
EndIf

DialogResult is an object that MessageBox returns when the user clicks the yes or no button.

This is my question (referring to the code in red). If objects have both methods and properties, then how can you simply test if a constant (DialogResult.Yes) is equal to the entire object?

I would expect something like

If WhichButtonDialogResult.Result = DialogResult.Yes

Instead.

[MacNilly]

You could overload a operator== class method for the class you want to compare for each type you want to compare it to.

I don't know what type DialogResult.Yes is, but say it's an integer constant, defined in the DialogResult class.

For example,

class DialogResult
{
public:
    typedef enum { Yes, No } ResultType;

    // compares two DialogResults
    bool operator==(const DialogResult& rhs)
    {
        // compare this object with right hand side
    }

    // compares this DialogResult with a ResultType (Yes or No)
    bool operator==(ResultType n)
    {
        return (n == Yes);
    }
};

[EDIT] Corrected Code [/EDIT]

You can overload operator== for as many types as you like, but note that the compiler won't force any semantics (meaning). In other words, you can overload operator== to do multiplication, but that is extremely poor practice.