C++ FAQ Celebrating Twenty-One Years of the C++ FAQ!!!
(Click here for a personal note from Marshall Cline.)
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?
[13.3] What are some examples of operator overloading?

Here are a few of the many examples of operator overloading:

  • myString + yourString might concatenate two std::string objects
  • myDate++ might increment a Date object
  • a * b might multiply two Number objects
  • a[i] might access an element of an Array object
  • x = *p might dereference a "smart pointer" that "points" to a disk record — it could seek to the location on disk where p "points" and return the appropriate record into x