How do I do that?

I wrote a class called MyString. It uses NTS string, c-style. Basically consists of constructors, copy constructor and destructor. Nothing else.
I also wrote another class, called People.

Code:

class People {
private:
   MyString    name;
   MyString    address;
   int         age;
public:
   // methods such as constructors asking user to provide
   // all the info to instantiate an object. Did not have a problem
   // with assigning values to MyString name or MyString address.

I need to write a show() method in this class which will display all its private members...... Here I encountered problems. First it did not compile , it complained that << does not defined in there. OK, so I tried to write a method overloading the operator << to display MyString types data members.
Here it is:

Code:

ostream& operator<<(ostream& os, const MyString &s) {
             return os<<s.getName()<<" "<<s.getAddress()<<endl;
             }

The compiler complains that

`std::ostream& People::operator<<(std::ostream&, const MyString&)' must take exactly one argument

and then that

'const class MyString' has no member named 'getName'

-- well, it doesn't because it is a public method for People class, not MyString class......
Can anybody help me solve this puzzle? Where am I wrong?

>> OK, so I tried to write a method overloading the operator << to display MyString types data members.

well it looks like you're mainipulating a People object within the function.

>> The compiler complains that

make it a friend function.

Code:

 struct People
 {
	friend 
	ostream & 
	operator << (ostream & os, const People & me)
	{
		return os<<me.getName()<<" "<<me.getAddress()<<endl;
	}	
 };

Maybe I am doing that wrong, but now the compiler lists << as no match again...
What I was thinking, maybe it has a problem with the return type of getName() and getAddress()...... It is MyString.

Code:

MyString getAddress() const { return address; }

Would that cause the problem?

did you overload MyString with operator << as well?

no. Should I?

-----------
Well, I tried that too. It compiles fine, but when I run the program it displays a blank line where the MyString vars (from People class) should go.
I tried to do this:

Code:

friend ostream& operator<<(ostream& os, const MyString &s) {
             return os<<s.str<<" "<<endl;
             }  
    void showit() { cout << str; }

-- that's in MyString class, and it works.......... Why it doesn't work for People class?

Does your copy constructor for the MyString class work correctly?

Also, your MyString class operator<< shouldn't havethe space and the newline from a design perspective. Just have it output the string and the People class operator<< can do the formatting instead.