I am refreshing my self on C++ (have not did it since school) and I wrote a simple program just to mess around. My problem is when I compile the program it chokes stating 
 "error: expected initializer before 'stringThing'"
is there a reason why this is doing this? I know this may be a noob question so I checked stackoverflow and could not find any relevant questions that gave me a answer.

\*I am using GNU GCC compiler 

Code:

```
#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

void string stringThing (string shiftdir, string &teststring)
    {
        if (shiftdir == "right")
        {
           teststring = teststring >> " " >> "Bit Shifted right";
        }
        else
        {
           teststring = teststring << " " << "Bit Shifted left";
        }
    }
int main()
{

    string test;

    cout << stringThing("right", "I have done a ") << endl;

    return 0;
}

```