c++ friend help

PTBmilo · 04-05-2003, 02:34 PM

I am writing a class to deal with complex numbers.

First of all, is it possible to overload "**" as an operator? I played around with it a lot, but it doesn't look like it's gonna let me do it.

If that doesn't work, I would like to have a function pow(Complex,int) that will raise 'Complex' to the power 'int'. I have it working o.k., but to use it in a main program, I have do use do something like:

Code:

Complex access, a(2,4);
Complex b = access.pow(a,2);

I am thinking that you can get around this with friend functions, but I can't seem to get the declerations right. Here's what I have:

Code:

class Complex
{
public:
        friend Complex pow(Complex, int);
}
Complex Complex::pow(Complex number,int power)
{ ..... }

Is there a way to do this so that I can use the pow(Complex,int) function without calling it as a member function?

EDIT:

crap, nevermind....

Code:

Complex pow(Complex number,int power)

wapcaplet · 04-05-2003, 06:03 PM

I'm not sure what you mean... there is no ** operator in C++. BASIC has an operator like that for exponentiation, but C++ only has the pow() function and ones like it. So to answer your question, there is no way to create a new operator - you can only overload existing ones. I suppose you could overload another one you don't need (like say, bitwise XOR: ^ ) to mimic exponentiation.

PTBmilo · 04-06-2003, 03:20 AM

hey, that's a good idea. Yeah, i know that there isn't a ** operator, but I was hoping that there would be a way to create one. thanks for the clarification.