overloading << problems

Hi,

I am trying to overload << as a friend class. As far as I understand, if class "a" declares "friend class b" then class b should be able to access all private and public members of class a, if this is incorrect then I have more problems than I thought. Otherwise, why doesn't this code work? The compiler error is :
error C2248: 'emp_name' : cannot access private member declared in class 'employee'

This is the relevant segment of the code:

Code:

class employee
{
private:
	char *emp_name;
	double rate, current_charge;
	int current_job_hrs;
public:
	employee(double e_rt, char *e_nam="Able", int e_curr_hrs=0) 
		: rate(e_rt), current_job_hrs(e_curr_hrs)
	{ 
		strcpy(emp_name, e_nam);
	}

	~employee()
	{
		cout << "Consultant destructor called for "
			 << *emp_name
			 << " by Matt Rossner and Vic Uppal"
			 << endl
			 << endl;

		delete emp_name;
	}

	void set_current_job_hrs(int hrs) { current_job_hrs = hrs; }

	virtual void calc_charge() { current_charge = current_job_hrs * rate; }

	friend ostream& operator <<(ostream& out, const employee& emp);

};

class home_employee : public employee
{
private:
	double office_rate;

public:
	home_employee(char *he_name, double he_rt, double he_ofc_rt=5);
	
	friend ostream& operator <<(ostream& out, const employee& emp)
	{
		out << "For home employee named "
			<< emp.emp_name
			<< "the charges so far are $"
			<< emp.current_charge;

		return out;
	}
	
};

home_employee::home_employee(char *he_name, double he_rt, double he_ofc_rt)
	: employee(he_rt, he_name), office_rate(he_ofc_rt) {}

ostream& operator <<(ostream& out, const home_employee& emp)
{
	out << "For employee named "
		<< emp.emp_name
		<< "the charges so far are $"
		<< emp.current_charge;

	return out;
}

Thanks for any help out there.

Looks like you are confusing a few things. Don't confuse the difference between a friend function and a friend object.

All of the "operator <<()" functions are just that, functions - ie. not methods of any class. The compiler knows what to call by type matching on the functions parameters.

This function is not declared as a friend of any object

Code:

ostream& operator <<(ostream& out, const home_employee& emp)

If you want this function to access non-public members of home_employee, then the function must be declared a friend in that class.

If you want to use polymorphism for printing, then add something like this to your base class, then you only need to overload operator<<() once for the base class by simply calling print()

Code:

virtual ostream& print(ostream &out) const;

gg

Member or friend functions of a derived class do not have a direct access to private data of base class.

thanks alot, I will make some modifications