What's the right way to overload the stream operators << >> for my class?

Question

I\'m a bit confused about how to overload the stream operators for my class in C++, since it seems they are functions on the stream classes, not on my class. What\'s the no

Answer 1

Your implementation is fine. The only additional step you need to perform is to declare your operator as a friend in Thing:

class Thing {
public:
  friend istream& operator>>(istream&, Thing&);
  ...
}