If we Create two or more members that have the same name but are different in number or type of parameter is known as "Overloading" .

In C++, we can overload:

We can overload these members because they have parameters only.

There are two types of Overloading as follows:

In Earlier Tutorials, we already discuss the Function Overloading, In this tutorial we will discuss Operator Overloading.

Operator overloading is a compile-time polymorphism in which the operator is overloaded to provide special meaning to the user-defined data type. Operator overloading is used to overload or redefine most of the operators available in C++. It is used to perform the operation on the user-defined data type.

Using operator overloading in C++, you can specify more than one meaning for an operator in one scope.

For example :- '+' operator can be overloaded to perform addition on various data types, like for Integer, String(concatenation) etc.

Other example :- classes where arithmetic operators may be overloaded are Complex Number, Fractional Number, Big Integer, etc.

The advantage of operator overloading is that it can perform different operations on the same​ operand.

For Example:-

Suppose we have created three objects a1, a2 and sum from a class named Complex that represents complex numbers.

Since operator overloading allows us to change how operators work, we can redefine how the + operator works and use it to add the complex numbers of a1 and a2 by writing the following code:

instead of something like

This makes our code intuitive and easy to understand.

Note: We cannot use operator overloading for fundamental data types like int, float, char and so on.

To overload an operator, we use a special operator function.

Here, is an explanation for the above syntax: