In which situations is the C++ copy constructor called?

Question

I know of the following situations in c++ where the copy constructor would be invoked:

1. when an existing object is assigned an object of it own class

Answer 1

I might be wrong about this, but this class allows you to see what is called and when:

class a {
public:
    a() {
        printf("constructor called\n");
    };  
    a(const a& other) { 
        printf("copy constructor called\n");
    };    
    a& operator=(const a& other) {
        printf("copy assignment operator called\n");
        return *this; 
    };
};

So then this code:

a b; //constructor
a c; //constructor
b = c; //copy assignment
c = a(b); //copy constructor, then copy assignment

produces this as the result:

constructor called
constructor called
copy assignment operator called
copy constructor called
copy assignment operator called

Another interesting thing, say you have the following code:

a* b = new a(); //constructor called
a* c; //nothing is called
c = b; //still nothing is called
c = new a(*b); //copy constructor is called

This occurs because when you when you assign a pointer, that does nothing to the actual object.