C++ - Overloading '=' to assign hex value to an object

Question

I'm trying to implement a system similar to color object hex assignment, such as:

Color color;
color = 0xffff00;

If my understand is correct the operator '=' has been overloaded so it actually stores the hex value in a datatype inside Color. I don't really understand how to do this, but here's what I have: (assume Color stores color in a 3 byte typedef called "data")

Color operator=(const unsigned int& c) {
    Color color;
    color.data = c;
    return color;
}

Would this give me what I need?

Answer 1

I think it would be better to implement it as a member function, so it can modify the object in place rather than constructing a new one and copying it.

class Color {
    ...
    public:
        void operator= (const unsigned int &c) {
            data = c;
        }
    ...
}

Answer 2

You should overload the assignment operator of the class and probably a constructor as well like this:

class Color
{
public:
    Color(): data(0) {}
    Color(unsigned i): data(i) {} // add an int constructor

    // add assignment operator
    Color& operator=(unsigned i) { data = i; return *this; }

private:
    unsigned data;
};

Overloading the constructor allows you to do initialization like this:

Color c = 0x00FF00;

Overloading the assignment operator allows you assign after initialization:

c = 0xFF00FF;