How to overload comparison operator with matrix class?

Question

No matter how hard I search I can not figure this out. I have to do a project with overloading operators and the only two I am having trouble with are == and !=. For the project directions == is defined as the rows, columns, and values of both matrices being identical.

so far for the == all I have is this:

bool Matrix::operator==(const Matrix & m) {
// not sure what to return if all values must be equal
}

Question is: what do I return and compare in the function for this to work properly?

Thanks ahead of time.

Answer 1

In mathematical terms, matrix equality requires all corresponding elements of two matrices, A and B have the same value. Thus A = B if and only if A_i,j = B_i,j for all i, j.

In your case, where you are looking at implementation in C++, you will need to verify the Matrix instances this and m are the same size, and they each contain the same value at corresponding locations. If they are the same size and have the same values in the corresponding locations, then == will return true (false otherwise), and != will return false (true otherwise).