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What is Operator Overloading?

Operator overloading is a compile-time polymorphism in which the operator is overloaded to provide the user-defined data type with a special meaning. Most of the operators available in C++ are overloaded or redefined using operator overloading. It’s used to run an operation on a user-defined data type.

Operators that can be overloaded:

• Binary Arithmetic     ->     +, -, *, /, %
• Unary Arithmetic     ->     +, -, ++, —
• Assignment     ->     =, +=,*=, /=,-=, %=
• Bitwise      ->     & , | , << , >> , ~ , ^
• Dereferencing     ->     (->)
• Dynamic memory allocation and Deallocation     ->     New, delete
• Subscript     ->     [ ]
• Function call     ->     ()
• Logical      ->     &,  | |, !
• Relational     ->     >, < , = =, <=, >=

There are, however, a few operators who cannot be overloaded. The operators which are not overloaded are as follows:

• scope operator -::
• sizeof
• member selector -.
• member pointer selector – *
• ternary operator – ?:

Operator Overloading Syntax:

return_type class_name  : : operator op(argument_list)  
{  
     // body of the function.  
}  

Implementation of Operator Overloading:

Operator overloading can be accomplished by implementing the following function:

• Member Function
• Non-Member Function
• Friend Function

Overloading Rules for Operators:

• Existing operators can only be overloaded, whereas new operators cannot.
• At least one operand of the user-defined data type is present in the overloaded operator.
• The friend function cannot be used to overload specific operators. The member function, on the other hand, can be used to overload those operators.
• When unary operators are overloaded via a member function, they take no explicit arguments, but when overloaded via a friend function, they take one argument.
• When binary operators are overloaded via a member function, they take one explicit argument; when they are overloaded via a friend function, they take two explicit arguments.

Note: also read about Virtual Destructors in C++

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