[c++] operator << must take exactly one argument

I ran into this problem with templated classes. Here's a more general solution I had to use:

template class <T>
class myClass
{
    int myField;

    // Helper function accessing my fields
    void toString(std::ostream&) const;

    // Friend means operator<< can use private variables
    // It needs to be declared as a template, but T is taken
    template <class U>
    friend std::ostream& operator<<(std::ostream&, const myClass<U> &);
}

// Operator is a non-member and global, so it's not myClass<U>::operator<<()
// Because of how C++ implements templates the function must be
// fully declared in the header for the linker to resolve it :(
template <class U>
std::ostream& operator<<(std::ostream& os, const myClass<U> & obj)
{
  obj.toString(os);
  return os;
}

Now: * My toString() function can't be inline if it is going to be tucked away in cpp. * You're stuck with some code in the header, I couldn't get rid of it. * The operator will call the toString() method, it's not inlined.

The body of operator<< can be declared in the friend clause or outside the class. Both options are ugly. :(

Maybe I'm misunderstanding or missing something, but just forward-declaring the operator template doesn't link in gcc.

This works too:

template class <T>
class myClass
{
    int myField;

    // Helper function accessing my fields
    void toString(std::ostream&) const;

    // For some reason this requires using T, and not U as above
    friend std::ostream& operator<<(std::ostream&, const myClass<T> &)
    {
        obj.toString(os);
        return os;
    }
}

I think you can also avoid the templating issues forcing declarations in headers, if you use a parent class that is not templated to implement operator<<, and use a virtual toString() method.

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