Explain copy operation...

Im using a book that quote this as a copy operation used to return a reference as a value, but i dont understand how it works, and how i would be used...

Code:

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TimeOfDay createTimeOfDay (int hours, int minutes) {
          TimeOfDay timeOfDay (hours, minutes);
                    return timeOfDay;}

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Thanks!:confused:

It doesn't return a "reference as a value". Something either returns by value, or by reference. That returns by value.

TimeOfDay timeOfDay(hours, minutes); // construct a TimeOfDay object with given paremeters
return timeOfDay; // return a TimeOfDay, does exactly the same thing as return TimeOfDay(timeOfDay). That is, it calls the copy constructor of TimeOfDay with timeOfDay as the parameter.

Note that this would be easier to read if the name of the class and the instance of the class didn't vary by capitailzation.

but how would it be used, and would the results be the value of hours and minutes??

That function is pretty useless... it does the exact same thing as a copy constructor, only slower.

The result wold be a single instance of class/struct TimeOfDay, which probably has it's own methods for reading the value of the hours and minutes.