Overloading operator << - C++

Question

Background

I have a container class which uses vector internally. I have provided a method AddChar(std::string) to this wrap

Answer 1

I'd prefer not to overload it that way personally because vectors don't normally have an overloaded left shift operator - it's not really it's idiom ;-)

I'd probably return a reference from AddChar instead like so:

ExtendedVector& AddChar(const std::string& str) {
    container.push_back(str);
    return *this;
}

so you can then do

container.AddChar("First").AddChar("Second");

which isn't really much bigger than bitshift operators.

(also see Logan's comment about passing strings in by reference instead of by value).