In C++, operator overloading allows you to define custom behavior for operators such as +, -, *, etc., when used with objects of your custom class. One common use case is overloading the * operator for matrix multiplication.

To overload the * operator for matrix multiplication in C++, you need to define a member function or a friend function. In this example, we will define a member function in a Matrix class.

class Matrix {
  // class members and methods here

public:
  Matrix operator*(const Matrix& other) const {
    // code for matrix multiplication here
  }
};

The operator* function takes a constant reference to another Matrix object as a parameter and returns a new Matrix object, which represents the result of matrix multiplication.

Inside the operator* function, you need to implement the logic for matrix multiplication. Here’s an example implementation using nested for loops:

Matrix Matrix::operator*(const Matrix& other) const {
  // perform matrix multiplication here

  // assuming matrix dimensions are compatible
  int rowsA = ...; // number of rows in current matrix
  int colsA = ...; // number of cols in current matrix
  int colsB = ...; // number of cols in other matrix

  Matrix result(rowsA, colsB); // create a new matrix to store the result

  for (int i = 0; i < rowsA; i++) {
    for (int j = 0; j < colsB; j++) {
      for (int k = 0; k < colsA; k++) {
        result[i][j] += (*this)[i][k] * other[k][j]; // perform multiplication and addition
      }
    }
  }

  return result;
}

To use the overloaded * operator, you can simply multiply two Matrix objects using the standard syntax:

Matrix mat1, mat2;
Matrix result = mat1 * mat2;

This will use the custom implementation of the * operator for matrix multiplication.

By overloading operators in C++, you can make your code more readable and expressive when working with custom classes. It enables you to use the same familiar syntax as built-in types.

#C++ #operatoroverloading