Hi i am currently learning c++ and just went through operator overloading.My question is in what situations would this be used for
Hi i am currently learning c++ and just went through operator overloading.My question is in what situations would this be used for
To provide more natural syntax.
Say you have a class Int. It is then more natural (and easier to read) to write i1 = i2 + i3, rather than i1.set(i2.add(i3)).
Originally Posted by Adak
Truth be told, not every class needs overloaded operators. Most operations are expected to stand for themselves (2 + x) or mirror something the language made you learn (as in *ptr). Probably, the most important operator you could write is assignment. Overloaded operators become more convenient when you start using the STL to do things: certain algorithms require operator<, or operator().
Suppose you wanted to implement matrices, so you define yourself a new class `Matrix`, probably as a template. Matrices have well defined multiplication, addition and transpose operations. You could implement these by overloading `operator*`, `operator+` and either `operator!` or `operator~` instead of implementing them as member functions `add()`, `multiply()` and `transpose()`. That would make the code operating on `Matrix` type variables look and read more natural. Which is one of the benefits of operator overloading.
Disclaimer: This post shows my ignorance at the time of its making. I claim ownership of but not responsibility for all errors in it. Reference at your own peril.
