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From: rich@Rice.edu (Rich Murphey)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++,gnu.g++
Subject: Re: Stream Manipulators: A Question
Message-ID: <RICH.90Feb10131724@kalliope.Rice.edu>
Date: 10 Feb 90 19:17:24 GMT
References: <6011@cadillac.CAD.MCC.COM>
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Followup-To: comp.lang.c++
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Organization: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice
	University
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In-reply-to: dsouza@mcc.com's message of 9 Feb 90 19:44:13 GMT

Desmond D'Souza asks about stream manipulators:

   According to the AT&T C++ 2.0 Library Manual (p 3-18) the following
   should be sufficient to define a simple manipulator called "tab". SUN C++
   accepts it, g++ 1.36.4 wont compile it, complaining it "cannot resolve
   overloaded function `tab' based on non-function type". 

   //--------------------- begin -------------
   #include<stream.h>

   ostream& tab(ostream& o) {
   return o << "\t"; }

   main () {
   cout << 1 << tab << 2 << tab << 3 ;
   }
   //--------------------- end -------------

Perhaps this is naive, but the definition of tab as a function and
it's use as a variable are confusing.

It seems like you want to create an object which prints a tab when
output to a stream.  One solutiong to your problem in g++ might be:

#include <stream.h>
class Tab
{
public:
  friend ostream& operator << (ostream&, const Tab&);
};
inline friend ostream& operator << (ostream& out, const Tab& p)
{
  return out << "\t";
}
Tab tab;

main ()
{
  cout << 1 << tab << 2 << tab << 3 ;
}

Hope that helps,
--
Rich@rice.edu