It is a type of polymorphism in which an operator is overloaded to give user-defined meaning to it
Overloaded operator is used to perform operation on user-defined data type
For example '+' operator can be overloaded to perform addition on various data types, like for Integer, String(concatenation) etc
Objects of user-defined types can play three different roles in a function
Understanding objects in each role helps the process of writing overloading operators
It is the one that is pointed to by the pointer
It must be constant if the function is not supposed to change it; it must be non-constant otherwise
It must be passed to the member function in three ways:
Functions may return an object in three ways:
Must use return-by-value if the returned object is created in the body of the function
Must use return-by-reference or by pointer if the returned object is passed as the parameter to the function
Operator overloading is the definition of two or more operations using the same operator
In the following example, the compiler changes the first operand to 14.0 to do the operation
Categories of Operators
Precedence - No change to the precedence of the operator
Associativity - The operator keeps its associativity
Commutativity - No change to commutativity of the operator
Arity - Unary & binary operators are kept
No new operators - No invention of operators
No combination - No new operators by combining 2 or more operators
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*References*
- C++ Programming - An Object-Oriented Approach, 2019
Behrouz, Richard et.al- Accelerated C++ - Practical Programming by Example, 2000
Andrew, Barbara et.al
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