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.