I am writing a class called Word, that handles a c string and overloads the <, , <=, = operators. word.h: friend bool operator<(const Word &a, const Word &b); word.cc: bool operator<(const Word &a, const Word &b) { if(a == NULL && b == NULL) return false; if(a == NULL) return true; if(b == NULL) return false; return a.wd < b.wd; //wd is a valid c string } main: char* temp = NULL; //EDIT: i was mistaken, temp is a char pointer Word a("blah"); //a.wd = [b,l,a,h] cout << (temp<a); i get a segmentation error before the first line of the operator< method after the last line in the main. I can correct the problem by writing cout << (a>temp); where the operator> is similarly defined and i get no errors. but my assignment requires (temp < a) to work so this is where i ask for help. EDIT: i made a mistake the first time and i said temp was of type Word, but it is actually of type char*. so i assume that the compiler converts temp to a Word using one of my constructors. i dont know which one it would use and why this would work since the first parameter is not Word. here is the constructor i think is being used to make the Word using temp: Word::Word(char* c, char* delimeters=NULL) { char *temporary = "\0"; if(c == NULL) c = temporary; check(stoppers!=NULL, "(Word(char*,char*))NULL pointer"); //exits the program if the expression is false if(strlen(c) == 0) size = DEFAULT_SIZE; //10 else size = strlen(c) + 1 + DEFAULT_SIZE; wd = new char[size]; check(wd!=NULL, "Word(char*,char*))heap overflow"); delimiters = new char[strlen(stoppers) + 1]; //EDIT: changed to [] check(delimiters!=NULL,"Word(char*,char*))heap overflow"); strcpy(wd,c); strcpy(delimiters,stoppers); count = strlen(wd); } wd is of type char* thanks for looking at this big question and trying to help. let me know if you need more code to look at