You need to say the following (since you befriend a whole template instead of just a specialization of it, in which case you would just need to add a <>
after the operator<<
):
template<typename T>
friend std::ostream& operator<<(std::ostream& out, const MyClass<T>& classObj);
Actually, there is no need to declare it as a friend unless it accesses private or protected members. Since you just get a warning, it appears your declaration of friendship is not a good idea. If you just want to declare a single specialization of it as a friend, you can do that like shown below, with a forward declaration of the template before your class, so that operator<<
is regognized as a template.
// before class definition ...
template <class T>
class MyClass;
// note that this "T" is unrelated to the T of MyClass !
template<typename T>
std::ostream& operator<<(std::ostream& out, const MyClass<T>& classObj);
// in class definition ...
friend std::ostream& operator<< <>(std::ostream& out, const MyClass<T>& classObj);
Both the above and this way declare specializations of it as friends, but the first declares all specializations as friends, while the second only declares the specialization of operator<<
as a friend whose T
is equal to the T
of the class granting friendship.
And in the other case, your declaration looks OK, but note that you cannot +=
a MyClass<T>
to a MyClass<U>
when T
and U
are different type with that declaration (unless you have an implicit conversion between those types). You can make your +=
a member template
// In MyClass.h
template<typename U>
MyClass<T>& operator+=(const MyClass<U>& classObj);
// In MyClass.cpp
template <class T> template<typename U>
MyClass<T>& MyClass<T>::operator+=(const MyClass<U>& classObj) {
// ...
return *this;
}