A class that implements rational numbers in C++
This header implements a class for representing and manipulating rational numbers. It features: Full operator overloading to allow intuitive mathematical expressions, including ^ as a power operator. Strict denominator checking to ensure that the denominator is never 0. Fraction reduction at every step, except for in two methods scaleUp and scaleDown (should be pretty obvious that if you want to scale, you don't want to simplify...) Construction from integers, other fractions, and strings. Member functions to check various attributes of the object Member functions to return as integer, floating point, and string representations. If a fraction is negative, the sign is always stored in the numerator.
The class is implemented such that all arithmetic member functions such as .add(...), .sub(...), etc, modify the object for which they are called without returning. Operators invoked do not modify the object ( except for assignment, compound assignment, and increment and decrement, of course).
Incrementing and decrementing adds a fraction of value of 1. eg: (3 / 4)++ yields 7 / 4.
The stream insertion operator must read strings in the form a / b with the slash included. Omitting the slash will result in error. This will be retinkered later.
The operator ^ is of lower precedence than arithmetic operators in C/C++. Therefore, to achieve PEDMAS ordering, you MUST place parentheses around an expression containing a power. The ~ operator, which is higher in precedence than the arithmetic operators, has also been overloaded as a power operator and works with PEDMAS. But this is a bit less intuitive and appealing to the eye. Use the one you prefer.