UNIVERSITY OF ESWATINI

FACULTY OF SCIENCE & ENGINEERING

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONIC
ENGINEERING

LECTURE NOTES
ON PROGRAMMING TECHNIQUES 2

LECTURE 12
Operator Overloading Part 2

2
Input and Output Operators
- We have been using stream extraction(input) and stream insertion (output) operators
to input data from basic data types, where variables, and strings are operands
- C++ allows the programmer to overload these operators for class objects
- Overloading the stream extraction and stream insertion operators, which will be
referred to as operator<< and operator>> respectively, makes it easier to work with
objects when writing programs
- Imagine you wanted to print a sequence of items from an object as shown below ,

Example
class Point
{
private:
double x, y, z;

public:
Point(double x1, double y1, double z1) : x(x1), y(y1), z(1)
{

double getX()
{
return x;
}

double getY()
{
return y;
}

double getZ()
{
return z;
}

};

- This could be done by adding a display member function in Point, then calling the
member function on an object as shown below

3
- But function display() cant be called in the middle of a statement e.g.
cout << "My point is: " << point1.display() << "in the cartesian plane. \n";

- This can only be achieved thus;

cout << "My point is: ";
point1.print();
cout<< in cartesian plane.\n";

- What other method can we use to display the coordinates?

- It turns out we can overload operator<< for class Point objects, then the coordinates
can be displayed in a single statement as shown below,
cout << "My point is: " << point1<< "in the cartesian plane. \n";

4
Overloading Operator<<
- Operator<< is a binary operator which normally has the cout object as an operand on
the left handside and basic data type operand on the right i.e.
cout<<operand of any basic datatype>

Example:
cout<<3000;, cout<<”my point: \n”;

- We have already mentioned that operator<< can be overloaded with a class object
such that cout<<point1 is realized.
- Note that cout is an object of type ostream, ostream is a class for which cout is an
object.
- An overloaded function to be used by the operator function call, cout<<point1, will
have the prototype shown below;

friend ostream& operator<<(ostream& out, const Point& point);

- The assumption is that it has been overloaded as a friend function of class Point
- The function definition will be as shown below,
class Point
{
friend ostream& operator<<(ostream& out, const Point& point);
private:
double x, y, z;

public:
Point(double x1, double y1, double z1) : x(x1), y(y1), z(1)
{

double getX()
{
return x;
}

double getY()
{
return y;
}

double getZ()
{
return z;
}
void display() const
{
cout << "point(" << x << "," << y << "," << z << "\n";

}
};

ostream& operator<<(ostream& out, const Point& point)

{

5
 out << "Point(" << point.x << "," << point.y << "," << point.z <<
")";
return out;
}

- The parameter out is a reference to cout

- Object out is returned to allow for chaining of calls to operator<<

Example
int main()
{
Point point1(3, 5, 8), point2(6, 1, 5);
//print the coordinates of the points
cout << point1 << point2 << "\n";
return 0;
}

- The execution of the statement to print the coordinates of each point will start from
the left, starting with cout<<point1, which returns object out,
- Then out<<point2 will follow which will also return out,
- Finally it will execute out<<”\n”;

Overloading Operator>>
- Overloading of operator>> can be done in a similar manner
- The overloading differs in that the left operand cin is an object of type istream
- Class istream is part of the C++ standard library

Example

class Point
{
friend ostream& operator<<(ostream& out, const Point& point);
friend istream& operator>>(istream& in, Const Point& point);
private:
double x, y, z;

public:
Point(double x1, double y1, double z1) : x(x1), y(y1), z(1)
{

double getX()
{
return x;
}

double getY()
{
return y;
}

double getZ()
{
return z;
}
void display() const

6
 {
cout << "point(" << x << "," << y << "," << z << "\n";

}
};

ostream& operator<<(ostream& out, const Point& point)

{
out << "Point(" << point.x << "," << point.y << "," << point.z << ")";
return out;
}

istream& operator>>(istream& in, Const Point& point)

{
in << point.x;
in << point.y;
in >> point.z;
return in;
}

- Similarly here, the object in is returned to allow for consecutive calls to operator>> in
a single statement.

Reading Assignment
- Read about unary operator overloading of operator++, operator--, and operator! from
the reference textbook
- As a reward for your reading and understanding you will be given 10% bonus marks
in the test, which you will ‘claim’ by answering basic questions related to the
overloading of these operators