Generic implementation of operator<< function in terms of the dump member function

Question

All my classes implement a dump member function, e.g.:

struct A {
    template 
    std::basic_ostream &
         


        

Answer 1

Generally this would be the advisable way, IMO:

struct A {
    int x = 5;

    friend std::ostream & operator<<(std::ostream &os, const A& a){
        return (os << a.x);
    }
};

Reason: 'friend' functions and << operator overloading: What is the proper way to overload an operator for a class?

If you really want to have a dedicated dump method, you could define a base class "collecting" dumpable objects.