I have a struct that I'd like to output using either 'std::cout' or some other output stream.
Is this possible without using classes?
Thanks
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
template <typename T>
struct point{
T x;
T y;
};
template <typename T>
std::ostream& dump(std::ostream &o,point<T> p) const{
o<<"x: " << p.x <<"\ty: " << p.y <<std::endl;
}
template<typename T>
std::ostream& operator << (std::ostream &o,const point<T> &a){
return dump(o,a);
}
int main(){
point<double> p;
p.x=0.1;
p.y=0.3;
dump(std::cout,p);
std::cout << p ;//how?
return 0;
}
I tried different syntax' but I cant seem to make it work.
Perhaps it's a copy-paste error, but there are just a few things wrong. Firstly, free-functions cannot be const
, yet you have marked dump
as such. The second error is that dump
does not return a value, which is also easily remedied. Fix those and it should work:
template <typename T> // note, might as well take p as const-reference
std::ostream& dump(std::ostream &o, const point<T>& p)
{
return o << "x: " << p.x << "\ty: " << p.y << std::endl;
}
For all intents and purposes, structs are classes in C++, except that their members default to public instead of private. There are potentially minor implementation-specific differences because of optimization but these have no effect on the standard functionality which is the same for classes and structs in C++.
Secondly, why have the "dump" function? Just implement it directly in the stream operator:
template<typename T>
std::ostream& operator << (std::ostream& o, const point<T>& a)
{
o << "x: " << a.x << "\ty: " << a.y << std::endl;
return o;
}