Creating a class

i'm trying to create this class and i'm having trouble getting it together.
1. How do i get the degree of a polynomial?
2. I'm trying to implement a friend function but I'm not sure how.
3. Not sure how to implement the non-member output function.
Please help!

#ifndef Poly.h
#define Poly.h
#include <iostream> // Provides ostream

class Polynomial
{
public:
// CONSTANT
static const unsigned int CAPACITY=5;
static const unsigned int MAX_DEGREE=10;

//CONSTRUCTOR
Polynomial(int degree)
{

}

//MODIFICATION MEMBER FUNCTIONS
void Polynomial::add_to_coeff(double amount, unsigned int exponent)
{
coeff[exponent] += amount;
}
void clear() //Reset the polynomial to zero
{
float result;
result=0;
}

void degree() //Get the Polynomial degree
{

}
//CONSTANT MEMBER FUNCTION
void poly_eval(const Polynomial& poly)
{
double x_value;
cout << "Enter the x value: ";
cin >> x_value;
cout << "For the poly: ";
view(poly);
cout << "The evaluation returned is " << poly(x_value) << endl;
}
// FRIEND FUNCTION
friend ostream& operator >> (ostream& out, const Polynomial&
poly);
private:

// NON-MEMBER BINARY OPERATORs
static const Polynomial operator +(const Polynomial& PX, const
Polynomial& QX);
static const Polynomial operator -(const Polynomial& PX, const

// NON-MEMBER OUTPUT FUNCTIONS
std::ostream& operator << (std::ostream& out, const Polynomial&
poly);
};
#endif

Here is how you add a friend. I didn't test the code but that is the gist of it.


#ifndef Poly.h
#define Poly.h
#include <iostream> // Provides ostream

class Polynomial
{
friend std:stream& operator << (std:stream& out, const Polynomial&
poly);
public:
// CONSTANT
static const unsigned int CAPACITY=5;
static const unsigned int MAX_DEGREE=10;

//CONSTRUCTOR
Polynomial(int degree)
{

}

//MODIFICATION MEMBER FUNCTIONS
void Polynomial::add_to_coeff(double amount, unsigned int exponent)
{
coeff[exponent] += amount;
}
void clear() //Reset the polynomial to zero
{
float result;
result=0;
}

void degree() //Get the Polynomial degree
{

}
//CONSTANT MEMBER FUNCTION
void poly_eval(const Polynomial& poly)
{
double x_value;
cout << "Enter the x value: ";
cin >> x_value;
cout << "For the poly: ";
view(poly);
cout << "The evaluation returned is " << poly(x_value) << endl;
}
// FRIEND FUNCTION
friend ostream& operator >> (ostream& out, const Polynomial&
poly);
private:

// NON-MEMBER BINARY OPERATORs
static const Polynomial operator +(const Polynomial& PX, const
Polynomial& QX);
static const Polynomial operator -(const Polynomial& PX, const

// NON-MEMBER OUTPUT FUNCTIONS
std:stream& operator << (std:stream& out, const Polynomial&
poly);
};
#endif


For the two operators you are overloading, those don't need to be friends, they can be member functions. The only time they have to be non-member friend functions is if they take a data type on the left hand side other than the data type (aka the class) they are in.

The degree is the largest exponent with nonzero coefficient. Constant polynomials (0, 1, ...) have degree 0, quadratics like x^2 + 5x have degree 2. Make sense?