Overloading by return type

Question

I read few questions here on SO about this topic which seems yet confusing to me. I\'ve just begun to learn C++ and I haven\'t studied templates yet or operator overloading

Answer 1

While most of the other comments on this problem are technically correct, you can effectively overload the return value if you combine it with overloading input parameter. For example:

class My {
public:
    int  get(int);
    char get(unsigned int);
};

DEMO:

#include 

class My {
public:
    int  get(         int x) { return 'I';  };
    char get(unsinged int x) { return 'C';  };
};

int main() {

    int i;
    My test;

    printf( "%c\n", test.get(               i) );
    printf( "%c\n", test.get((unsigned int) i) );
}

The resulting out of this is:

I 
C