The assignment operator can be overloaded using a member function but not a non-member friend
function:
class Test
{
int a;
public:
Test
$13.5.3 - "An assignment operator shall be implemented by a non-static member function with exactly one parameter. Because a copy assignment operator operator= is implicitly declared for a class if not declared by the user (12.8), a base class assignment operator is always hidden by the copy assignment operator of the derived class."