How to define a static operator<<?

Question

Is it possible to define a static insertion operator which operates on the static members of a class only? Something like:

class MyClass
{
public:
    static         


        

Answer 1

You can't. A class-name / type is not a value in itself, you would need an expression like

class Foobar {...};

std::cout << Foobar << std::endl;

so that your static operator<< would be usable, but that is not valid C++. The grammar summary at A.4 shows that putting a type's name there is not valid.

Consider also that operator overloads are just functions with flaky names:

T  operator<< (T, T)
   ^^^^^^^^^^ flaky name, basically same as:
T  left_shift (T, T)

And functions in C++ (and most other languages, e.g. C#) can only work on instances of types, not types themselves.

However, C++ offers templates which have type arguments, howhowever, that would not help you to overload functions upon types.