Unary and Binary Operators

In C++, operators play a fundamental role in performing various operations on data. They can be broadly categorized into two types: unary operators, which take a single parameter, and binary operators, which work with two parameters. Each type of operator can serve a specific purpose in manipulating custom data types and their expressions.

Let’s explore these two categories in depth to gain a comprehensive understanding of how to effectively overload these functions and apply them to a user-defined data type.

Overloading unary operators

Unary operators act on a single operand. Here are some common unary operators:

• Prefix and postfix increment (++, --)

• Unary plus and minus (+, -)

• Logical NOT (!)

• Function call operator (())

• Others (*, &, ~)

We can overload unary operators both inside and outside a class. When overloading inside a class, it’s common to use constant (const) member functions to ensure the left argument is received as const in the this pointer.

Example: Overloading the unary minus (-) operator inside and outside a class