C++ Operator Overloading

Operator overloading is a type of polymorphism in which a single operator is overloaded to give a user-defined meaning. Operator overloading provides a flexible option for creating new definitions of C++ operators.

There are some C++ operators which we can't overload.

These are the lists of a few excluded operators and are very few compared to large sets of operators that can be used for operator overloading. An overloaded operator is used to operate on the user-defined data type. Let us take an example of the addition operator (+) operator that has been overloaded to perform addition on various variable types, like integer, floating point, String (concatenation), etc.

Syntax:

return type className :: operator op (arg_list)
{
    //Function body;
}

Here, the return type is the type of value returned by the specified operation, and op is the operator being overloaded.

Here is an example program for operator overloading:

Example:

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

class MinusOverload {
private:
    int a;
    int b;

public:
    void Distance()
    {
        a = 0;
        b = 0;
    }

    MinusOverload(int f, int i)
    {
        int c;
        a = f;
        b = i;
        c = a - b;
        cout << "\nC:" << c;
    }

    void display()
    {
        cout << "A: " << a << " B:" << b << endl;
    }

    MinusOverload operator-()
    {
        a = -a;
        b = -b;
        return MinusOverload(a, b);
    }
};

int main()
{
    MinusOverload M1(6, 8), M2(-3, -4);
    -M1;
    M1.display();
    -M2;
    M2.display();
    return 0;
}