Extend classes w/o inheritance?

[ZYV]

Hello!

I'd like to implement operators > and < for bitset class. I know how to do this for a class of my own (1). I also know I could create a new class inheriting from bitset and implement those operators for it as in (1). The question is whether there is a way in C++ just to extend this base class, w/o creating an inherited child class on top of it?

Thanks!

[Bazzy]

You don't need to have operators overloaded as members of a class so you don't need a child class only for operator overloading

eg:

bool operator < ( const bitset & a, const bitset & b )
{
    //...
}

[ZYV]

Wow, thanks for the quick reply! The declaration of the kind:

const bool operator >= (const bitset<REAL_FULL> &lhs, const bitset<REAL_FULL> &rhs);

seems to work well! The other (I use to define my class methods) didn't work though:

const bool operator >= (const bitset<REAL_FULL> &lhs, const bitset<REAL_FULL> &rhs) const;

Could you please tell me where I can look up the correct usage of the const keyword? Probably I just don't understand correctly what it's doing. So far I've read the great introductory tutorial on this site, but this does not seem to be covered there...?

Thanks!

[Bazzy]

the second declaration is a class member so you need only 1 argument as the other would be the class object ( this )

To see explanation/uses of 'const' try http://duramecho.com/ComputerInformation/WhyHowCppConst.html

[ZYV]

Thank you very much, now it's clear! You're very helpful :)