Why friend function is preferred to member function for operator<<

Question

When you are going to print an object, a friend operator<< is used. Can we use member function for operator<< ?

class A {

public:
void operator<         


        

Answer 1

You can't. But If you don't want it to be a friend function, make it a free function and implement it in terms of the class' public interface. For eg.

 ostream& operator<<(ostream& os, Myclass& obj)
{
   return obj.print(os);
}

ostream& MyClass::print(ostream& os)
{
   os << val; // for example.
   return os;
}