How to define class-specific << operator in C++

Question

Given a class such as:

class Person
{
private:
    char *name;

public:
    Person()
    {
        name = new char[20];
    }
    ~Person()
    {
        delete [] name;
    }
}

I want to print to print the name from an instance of this, using a statement like the following:

cout << myPerson << endl;

What do I need to do to define the << output operator for this class?

Answer 1

add this in the class:

friend std::ostream& operator<< (std::ostream& out, const Person& P);

and then define the operator<< something like this:

std::ostream& operator<< (std::ostream& out, const Person& P) {
    out << P.name;
    return out;
}

Answer 2

You can not do that directly from main() as name is declared as private here. You'll have to create a public fucntion and call that from main()

Like this:

class Person { private: char *name;

public:
Person()
{
       name = new char[20];
}
~Person()
{
    delete [] name;
}
void print()
{

 cout << myPerson << endl;
}

}

int main() {

Person p;

p.print();

return 0; }

Answer 3

Define a member funtion print() that takes an ostream as an argument. Then let the overloaded operator<< call this member funtion. This way you can avoid using friend. Example:

void YourClass::print(ostream& out) const
{
    //implement printing ...
}
ostream& operator<<(ostream& out, const YourClass& m)
{
    m.print(out);
    return out;
}