Overloaded, inheritance, scope resolution

[toomanystars]

Hi guys,

Came upon a syntactic problem, and looking for a little help.

I have two classes, Patient which is derived from Person;

class Patient:public Person{

public:
void input();
void print();

};

Then I have this class

class Person{

friend std::istream& operator>>(std::istream& input, Person& the_person);

};

Now, if the Person class had a function called...

void input();

Inside the Patient class, I could do this...

Patient::input(){

Person::input();
/*
more code here

*/

}

However, since Person is using overloading, I am not sure how to syntactically make it work.

So my question is, inside of the Patient::input() function, how do I "input" a person using the overloaded >> operator.

Any help would be greatly appriciated. Of course I could just cheap out and not use the >> operator, but I am trying to learn new techniques.

Thanks a lot,

Mike

[JLBorges]

#include <iostream>

struct person
{
    // ...
    protected:
        virtual std::istream& read( std::istream& stm )
        { /* read person stuff from stm */ return stm ; }

        virtual std::ostream& write( std::ostream& stm ) const
        { /* write person stuff to stm */ return stm ; }

    friend inline std::istream& operator >> ( std::istream& stm, person& p )
    { return p.read(stm) ; }

    friend inline std::ostream& operator << ( std::ostream& stm, const person& p )
    { return p.write(stm) ; }
};

struct patient : person
{
    // ...
    protected:
        virtual std::istream& read( std::istream& stm )
        { person::read(stm) ; /* read extra patient stuff from stm */ return stm ; }

        virtual std::ostream& write( std::ostream& stm ) const
        { person::write(stm) ; /* write extra patient stuff to stm */ return stm ; }

};

int main()
{
    person a ;
    patient b ;
    std::cin >> a >> b ;
    std::cout << a << '\n' << b ;
}

[pogrady]

You wouldn't need a function called input:

Person P;
std::ifstream inf("thefile.dat");
inf>>P;

Then in the implementation of the person you would define where the data goes.

Is this what you are asking?

[toomanystars]

Thanks pogrady and JLBorges, got it solved.