Introduction to C++ Operator Overloading

CS202 6- ‹#›

Overloading <<, >> Operators

nWe overload the << and >> operators for insertion into the output stream and extraction from the input stream.

nThe iostream library overloads these operators for the built-in data types, but is not equipped to handle new data types that we create. Therefore, in order for extraction and insertion operators to be used with objects of our classes, we must overload these operators ourselves.

nThe extraction and insertion operators must be overloaded as non-members because the first operand is an object of type istream or ostream and not an object of one of our classes.