>From my understanding of Richter's book (Applied MS .NET Framework Programming) implementing Equals for a type is tricky.
The issue is that System.Object.Equals is implemented essentially as ReferenceEquals. If you derive from a class, and override Equals you have to take great care deciding on when to chain down to the base class implementation. If the base class doesn't override the method you will end up with ReferenceEquals, which is probably not what you wanted or you wouldn't be overriding Equals in the first place. However, if the base class does then you must chain down. I'm relatively new to this - well, I'm coming back to it after a long break - so I'm wondering how people handle this. How can I tell if the class I am inheriting from has provided an override for Equals - or any classes it inherits from? Is it a matter of documentation? Or is there any other way to tell? I'm thinking about the case when I didn't write the base class for example. Thanks! -John You can read messages from the DOTNET archive, unsubscribe from DOTNET, or subscribe to other DevelopMentor lists at http://discuss.develop.com.
