what is & means?

[jimmy5023]

i am working on overloading an operator and i see

void operator = (const person &right)

Person is the class, but what is "&" represent? what does it do? what is the difference between having it and not having it in the program?

[PanGalactic]

In this context it indicates that a person object is being passed as a (const) reference, bound to the name "right".

[Bazzy]

See http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/functions2/
const reference are the same as described in the tutorial but objects passed like that can't be modified.
That is useful when you don't want to copy large objects

[zb0S216C]

Basically, you are passing a reference to the cell where the given argument is located. By making it a constant reference, it becomes protected from modification.

Edited.