Overloading Operators

[therockon7throw]

and why there is some white space between Matrix and &, and between ostream and &

[oonej]

that doesn't make a difference, its just personal preference... from what i understand

[therockon7throw]

to your question

consider the class below

class D{
private:
	int i;
public:
	D(int i ): i(i){}
	int get(){ return i;}
	int get()const { return i;}
};

the function which takes a const object of type D

int f(const D& i){
	return i.get();
}

and some code

D o(6);
cout<<f(o)<<endl; // this calls the function f which calls the const version of the get
cout<<o.get()<<endl;// this calls the normal version of get 

that is a safer way, but if you do not implement the normal version it is also ok, in this case

cout<<o.get(); // calls the const version , no other way 

and to your problem with ostream, the last way is to define the function as a friend member inside your class

friend ostream& operator<< (ostream& out, const Matrix& test);

and implement it in your source or header file

ostream& operator<< (ostream& out, const Matrix& test){
//do some thing
return out;
}

and might be without const, I am not sure try it yourself