Re: Operator as non-function

From:
James Kanze <james.kanze@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Fri, 15 Feb 2008 12:49:54 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID:
<cc278066-411d-42a5-a203-243a9b8872b3@i29g2000prf.googlegroups.com>
On Feb 15, 3:52 pm, saneman <y...@dd.com> wrote:

James Kanze wrote:

On Feb 15, 2:51 am, saneman <y...@dd.com> wrote:


Ok this version below works as you recommended:

template< class A > class BOB;
template< class A >
BOB<A> operator+(typename BOB<A>::difference_type, BOB<A> const& );

template <class A>
class BOB {
private:
        typedef BOB<A> iterator;
public:
        typedef typename A::difference_type difference_type;
        friend iterator operator + <> (difference_type i, const iterator& =

it);

};

But I don't understand the first 3 lines.


Just declarations, so that the symbols are known to the
compiler. You need to declare the operator+ function, so that
the compiler knows it is a template, and you need to declare the
class template BOB, in order to refer to it in the operator+
functions.

In Bjarne Stroustrup C++PL
C.13.2 page 854 he writes the following example:

template <class T> class Matrix;
template <class T> class Vector {
        T v[4];
public:
        friend Vector operator *<> (const Matrix<T>&, const Vector&);
};

So it seems that it should not be necessary to declare the
operator as a template operator.


I thought you wanted it to be a template. If you don't, drop
the <>.

I have C++ Templates by David Vandevoorde, but there is no
info on this special rule, is there some documentation on the
theory behind this example?


It's not a special rule, as far as I can see. The compiler
parses templates in two phases. In order to do so successfully,
it must know what symbols are templates, and what symbols are
the names of types---the grammar of C++ isn't context free.
That's why if the symbol is dependent, and unknown at the
point of use, you must tell the compiler that it is a template
or a typename. In this case, it's a little more complex,
because the symbol occurs in a context where preceding it by the
keyword "template" would cause ambiguities, or mean something
else. So you must declare is somewhere so that the compiler
will recognize it as a template.

Quite frankly, I wouldn't bother. I'd write a named member
function to do what I wanted, and then define the operator as a
template after, to call the named member function. So there'd
be no need of making it a friend.

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