Can I create a operator** for "to-the-power-of" operations?, C++ FAQ

C++ FAQ / Section 13 / FAQ 13.7

Section 13:

13.1	What's the deal with `operator` overloading?
13.2	What are the benefits of operator overloading?
13.3	What are some examples of operator overloading?
13.4	Is `operator` overloading supposed to make the class' code clearer?
13.5	What operators can/cannot be overloaded?
13.6	Overloading `operator==` to use string comparison?
13.7	Can I create `operator**` for to-the-power-of?
13.8	But which operators should I override?
13.9	Guidelines / "rules of thumb" for overloading operators?
13.10	Creating a subscript `operator` for a `Matrix` class?
13.11	Should my `Matrix` interface look like an array-of-array?
13.12	Part two of making my `Matrix` interface look like an array-of-array?
13.13	Designing classes from the outside-in vs. inside-out?
13.14	Overloading prefix/postfix forms of operators `++` and `--`?
13.15	Which is more efficient: `i++` or `++i`?

[13.7] Can I create a operator** for "to-the-power-of" operations?

Nope.

The names of, precedence of, associativity of, and arity of operators is fixed by the language. There is no operator** in C++, so you cannot create one for a class type.

If you're in doubt, consider that x ** y is the same as x * (*y) (in other words, the compiler assumes y is a pointer). Besides, operator overloading is just syntactic sugar for function calls. Although this particular syntactic sugar can be very sweet, it doesn't add anything fundamental. I suggest you overload pow(base,exponent) (a double precision version is in <cmath>).

By the way, operator^ can work for to-the-power-of, except it has the wrong precedence and associativity.