Friend Function

[blaze41]

How would you create a friend function for cout and cin? It is for an assignment but I dont know how to start.

[vlad from moscow]

You can not create a friend function for standard classes cout and cin because their realization in fact is hidden. You can declare a friend function for your class.

[hanst99]

What you can do though, is overload the << and >> operators for your own types.

[blaze41]

Thank you for your quick response, My instructor want us to to this:

Provide a friend function << for cout
Provide a friend function >> for cin

No idea how or where to start.

[hanst99]

Then he means that the operators are supposed to be friends of your own class, and should be used to write to cout/ read from cin.

For that, you need to provide the functions

std::ostream& operator<<(std::ostream&, const YourClass&);

and

std::istream& operator>>(std::istream&, YourClass&);

Both should be declared friends of YourClass (replace YourClass with the name of your class, obviously).

cout is an instance of ostream, cin is an instance of istream, in case you didn't know.

[blaze41]

Oh thank you very much!