This does become an issue however when working with references. Try to find out for yourself what could happen to the arguments of type Bar in the following methods:

Well, it looks like in the first example, b won't get changed where in the second example it could get changed.  I guess I'm overthinking this const-correctness thing

However, I (think) I still don't understand the uses of the copy ctor/assignment op;

class Foo{
private:
    int data
public:
/*normal ctor*/
    Foo(int d) : data(d) {};
/*copy ctor*/
    Foo(const &Foo copy) : data(copy.data){};
/*assignment op*/
    Foo& operator=(const &Foo copy){ data = copy.data };
};

is the above correct? 

if so, what do they have to do with dynamically allocated memory?

Foo *_ptr = new Foo();

/*does this create a whole new space in memory for test?
  if it does, am I correct in saying that the default assign op
  only makes test point to the same area of memory as _ptr - hence the whole
  deal about copy assignment operators?*/
Foo test = *_ptr;

This does become an issue however when working with references. Try to find out for yourself what could happen to the arguments of type Bar in the following methods:

Well, it looks like in the first example, b won't get changed where in the second example it could get changed.  I guess I'm overthinking this const-correctness thing

However, I (think) I still don't understand the uses of the copy ctor/assignment op;

class Foo{
private:
    int data
public:
/*normal ctor*/
    Foo(int d) : data(d) {};
/*copy ctor*/
    Foo(const &Foo copy) : data(copy.data){};
/*assignment op*/
    Foo& operator=(const &Foo copy){ data = copy.data };
};

is the above correct? 

if so, what do they have to do with dynamically allocated memory?

Foo *_ptr = new Foo();

/*does this create a whole new space in memory for test2?
  if it does, am I correct in saying that the default assign op
  only makes test point to the same area of memory as _ptr - hence the whole
  deal about copy assignment operators?*/
Foo test = *_ptr;