Overloading operators

kibestar (42)
Well, is there ANY concrete use for overloading operators? I mean, is there something that can ONLY be made using overloaded operators? I'm asking this because reading the local tutorial (found on this website), I can't really see much of a use for overloaded operators. If there is any concrete use, can somewone post me an example of code so I can understand it better? Thanks in advance.

Zhuge (634)
It's for convenience, really. Rather than: `a.add(b)` You can write the nicer looking: `a + b` Operators are really just functions with set parameters, so they can do anything a function can.

darkestfright (136)
Pretty much what Zhugge said... Imagine having a 'number-like' class, and if you need to do some arithmetic using member functions for example: `((a + b * c )/ d) % e` try to write that using obj.{add,sub, mul, div, mod}() functions in a readable, understandable way and with proper arithmetic precedence.

NGen (234)
`std::string a, b, c, d, e, f, g;` What's easier to concatenate all of these strings? This: `a.concat ( b.concat ( c.concat ( d.concat ( e.concat ( f.concat ( g ) ) ) ) ) )` Or this: `a+b+c+d+e+f+g` So... basically I'm saying what Zhuge was saying, but I just gave a bit of a better example.
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Bazzy (4118)

Having operators overloaded would make template functions work better:

1 2 3 4 5

template < class T >
void f ( T a )
{
    // use some operators, using methods would be less generic
}

C++ is meant to work with user-defined types the same way as with basic types

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