Mystring Class help..

Hey,
I have an assignment for my Data structures class to write my own string class using character arrays with Dynamic Memory Allocation. Its way over due, and I still cant figure out how to do much of anything. Does anyone have a simplified string class where I could understand how to create the class and work on changing it to dynamic memory allocation on my own?

A string class should look something like this:

Code:

---

class myString
{
private:
    char* data;
    unsigned int allocated;
public:
    //constructor
    myString() : data(0), allocated(0) {}
    myString(const myString& that)
    { /* Allocate memory, copy data from 'that' */ }
    //destructor
    ~mystring()
    { /* Free the memory allocated for 'data' */ }

    //operators
    myString& operator = (const myString& that)
    {
        // Ensure that 'data' is large enough, if not, free the current memory, and allocate more memory
        // Copy
    }
    // More functions:
    //    operator += for appending strings
    //    c_str() that returns 'data' with a terminating 0
    //    all of the operators again that take a char* instead of a myString
};

---

Thanks alot.. I should be able to figure it out a little easier now.. I hope..

-Jason

Okay so i'm working with the mystring class. Currently i am trying to overload the extraction operator. I came up with the code below, which I know wont show me the entire string but should display the first character of the string (i'll figure out how to actually do that later). But when I go to compile it with this I get these two error messages.

"Error E2080 mystring.cpp 28: 'mystring::operator <<(ostream &,const mystring &)' must be declared with one parameter

Error E2280 mystring.cpp 52: Member identifier expected in function operator <<(ostream &,const mystring &)"


//Class member description
ostream& operator <<(ostream&, const mystring&);

//My implementation of the extraction operator
ostream& mystring::operator <<(ostream& out, const mystring& tmp)
{
out<< tmp.(*theBuffer);
return out;
}


If anyone could explain to me what i'm doing wrong I would really appreciate it. I dont usually have this much trouble with classes, but it all doesnt come easy to me yet.

operator << shouldn't be a member of the string class, if it is a member it has 3 parameters (the two you see, and the this pointer)

It can't be. If it was it would have only one parameter, but it wouldn't work the way it should.

It has to be a global function.