Re: Non-member operator overloading, linker complains

From:
Thomas Maeder <maeder@glue.ch>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
2 May 2006 06:37:05 -0400
Message-ID:
<m264kpekoj.fsf@glue.ch>
Michael Hofmann <mhofmann79@arcor.de> writes:

#include <iostream>
#include <algorithm>
#include <vector>

template<typename T, unsigned int d, unsigned int e> class Matrix
{
private:
      friend Matrix<T, d, e> operator-( const Matrix<T, d, e>& m );


This declares a non-template.

      typedef std::vector<T> data_type;
      data_type data_;

public:
      Matrix( T value )
      {
              data_.resize( d * e );
              std::fill( data_.begin(), data_.end(), value );
      }

      // ...
};


template<typename T, unsigned int d, unsigned int e> class Matrix;

template<typename T, unsigned int d, unsigned int e>
Matrix<T, d, e> operator-( const Matrix<T, d, e>& m );

template<typename T, unsigned int d, unsigned int e> class Matrix
{
        friend Matrix<T, d, e> operator- <>( const Matrix<T, d, e>& m );
etc.

should help.

template <typename T, unsigned int d, unsigned int e>
Matrix<T, d, e> operator-( const Matrix<T, d, e>& m )


This defines a template.

{
      Matrix<T, d, e> mRes( m );
      Matrix<T, d, e>::data_type::iterator itrEnd = mRes.data_.end();
      for ( Matrix<T, d, e>::data_type::iterator itr =
            mRes.data_.begin(); itr != itrEnd; ++itr )
              (*itr) = -(*itr);
      return mRes;
}

template <typename T, unsigned int d, unsigned int e, unsigned int f>
Matrix<T, d, f> operator*( const Matrix<T, d, e>& m1,
                            const Matrix<T, e, f>& m2 )
{
      // does multiplication without accessing
      // private members of Matrix<>
      // ...
      return Matrix<T, d, f>( 0.0 ); // dummy return
}

int main()
{
      Matrix<double, 3, 3> m( 1.0 );
      Matrix<double, 3, 3> n( 2.0 );
      Matrix<double, 3, 3> o = m * n; // no problems


Non non-template to be referenced here, so the template specialization
is referenced.

      Matrix<double, 3, 3> p = -n; // yields linker error


This references the non-template, which hasn't yet be defined.

      return ( EXIT_SUCCESS );
}


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