Overloading Operators

Overloading operators allows you to apply existing operators to objects of class type. For example, you can stipulate the effect of the + operator for the objects of a particular class.

This chapter describes various uses of overloaded operators. Arithmetic operators, comparisons, the subscript operator, and the shift operators for input and output are overloaded to illustrate the appropriate techniques.

The concept of friend functions, which is introduced in this context, is particularly important for overloading operators.