Diff between function overloading and operator overloading: function, operator, between, difference

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Hi KalluMama,

Function overloading is like you have different functions with the same name but different signatures working differently. So, the compiler can differentiate and find out which function to call depending on the context. In case of operator overloading, you try to create your own functions which are called when the corresponding operator is invoked for the operands.

One important thing to understand is that you can create as many functions as you want with the same name and sifferent signatures so that they can work diffrently but for a particular class, you cannot overload the operator function based on number of arguments. There is a fundamental reason behind this.

According to the rules, you can not create your own operators but you have to use already available operators. Another thing is since the operator are already defined for use with buily-in types you can not change their charecteristics. For example the binary operator '+' always takes two parameters, so for this you cannot create a function that takes three parameters. But you can always overload them based on the type of the parameters. Considers the following code fragment.

bash-2.05$ cat a2.cc
#include <iostream>
#include <string>

using namespace std;

class A {
public:
int a;
float b;
char c;
A(int x=0, float y=0.0, char z='\0'):a(x),b(y),c(z) { }
const A& operator + (int x) {
a = a+ x;
return *this;
}
const A& operator + (float y) {
b = b+ y;
return *this;
}
const A& operator + (char z) {
c = c+ z;
return *this;
}
};

int main() {
A m;
A n = m + 4;
A o = m + 1.2f;
A p = m + 'a';
cout << "a = " << m.a << " b = " << m.b << " c = " << m.c << endl ;
return 0;
}

bash-2.05$ ./a.out
a = 4 b = 1.2 c = a

I hope this clears some things.

Cheers!

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Diff between function overloading and operator overloading

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function

operator

between

difference

C++ Programming Language

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