#408 – Overloading the == Operator for a Reference Type

You can override the Equals method for a type to implement value equality for the type. You can also overload the == operator.

By default, the == operator will do a reference equality check, only returning true if two references point to exactly the same object.  This is normally what you want for a reference type, using the Equals method if you want to check for value equality.  But there might be cases when you want to also overload the == operator, having it also check for value equality.  You might do this if your type represents some basic value, like a complex number.

Some guidelines.  Whenever you overload the == operator, you should also:

• Overload != operator
• Override Equals method
• Overload < and > operators