Question

I have a GolfCourse class header gcourse.hh and I want to implement operator overload for >>operator. How do I do this outside the header in file gcourse.cc? That is, which “words” do I need to point to the class itself, “GolfCourse::” is not enough like for functions…?

gcourse.hh:
class GolfCourse {

public:
---
friend std::istream& operator>> (std::istream& in, GolfCourse& course);

gcourse.cc:
---implement operator>> here ---

Answer 1

GolfCourse:: is incorrect because operator >> isn’t a member of GolfCourse. It’s a free function. You’d just need to write:

std::istream& operator>> (std::istream& in, GolfCourse& course)
{
   //...
   return in;
}

The friend declaration in the class definition is only needed if you plan to access private or protected members from GolfCourse. You can, of course, provide the implementation inside the class definition:

class GolfCourse {
public:
    friend std::istream& operator>> (std::istream& in, GolfCourse& course)
    {
       //...
       return in;
    }
};