prashantha shet

Oct 7th, 2007

If your question is about how to write an operator overload with multiple dimensions, then you can overload operator (). The [] operator is a binary operator with an implied "this". This means you can pass in only one argument.

Now, what happens if you pass in multiple arguments to [] invocation?

Say you have

class C
{
public:
int operator [] (int i) { return i; }
}

now, if you write:
C c;
c[1,2,3]; //this is still valid

However, tThe value of 'i' passed into operator [] is 3. That is because, remember that ','(comma) is a valid operator in C++ and it resolves to the rightmost expression. In this case, the result of the expression "1,2,3" = 3. Therefore, c[1,2,3] will return "3".

On the other hand, there is no limit for the number of arguments for () operator. You can have a member function above like this:

int operator() (int i, int j, int k) { return i+j+k; }

In fact, you can also use varargs with this operator, as follows:

int operator() (int i, ...);

Hope that helps.