Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!mailrus!cornell!rochester!kodak!elmgate!jdg
From: jdg@elmgate.UUCP (Jeff Gortatowsky CUST)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: A question or two from a Beginner
Message-ID: <1001@elmgate.UUCP>
Date: 12 Jan 89 01:56:08 GMT
Reply-To: jdg@aurora.UUCP (Jeff Gortatowsky)
Organization: Eastman Kodak Company, Rochester NY
Lines: 39

Well after reading the available news in this group for the first time
it appears C++ is still in qutie a state of flux.  I'm an 'experianced'
C programmer who has just started to use C++.  My two platforms are
a Sun (G++) and a PC (Zortech).  But my questions are generic.
I apologize if they seem 'dumb'.

First, the string class shown on page 185 of "The C++ Programming
Langauge".  A few pages further on Mr. Stroustrup explains that operators
which may have a non-lvalue operands should be 'friends' of a
class.  This made good sense until I backed up to the friend functions of
the string class.
Take for example (using that class example)
string foo ("abc");
	if ("ABB" == foo) { ..... etc....

Would not the compiler complain in any case that the arguments do not match
either of the two '==' operator functions declared?  Shouldn't there be
another overloaded '==' function that takes a char* first and a string
object reference second?  Is "ABB" automagically converted to a string
object and the 2nd '==' friend function called?  If so then a constructor
would be called, yes?  And right after the if statement the destructor?
Is the example string class complete? Will the compiler reverse the 
two operands?  No it couldn't, could it.  That would mess up operators such
as <= or >.  Did I miss something?

References in C++ really mess me up.  Anyone got a lucid explanation for
a C programmer? Reference to me always meant "address of".

To Mr. Bright.  I had no problems obtaining or using your compiler (1.07).
But then I'm a C++ novice and have no non-trivial code to compile yet.
I'm looking forward to future releases.  Thanks for the work.

Sorry for the length.  Thanks for any helpful answers.

-- 
Jeff Gortatowsky-Eastman Kodak Company  .....rochester!kodak!elmgate!jdg
(use uuhosts or such to find path to rochester)
Eastman Kodak makes film not comments.  Therefore these comments are mine
not theirs.