Operator overloading
Operator overloading is a language feature that defines type-specific behavior for predefined operators applied to user-defined types.
Kotlin in Action, 2E
Operator overloading is a language feature that assigns custom implementations to predefined operator symbols.
- How it is used
- Enables custom and adapted types to use familiar Kotlin arithmetic, collection, comparison, and iteration syntax.
- How deep it goes
- Works through `operator` declarations, function mappings, precedence, operand types, extensions, and unary increment semantics; defers broader convention details.
- Examples
- Demonstrates Point addition, scaling, negation, Char repetition, and BigDecimal increment with prefix and postfix forms.
- What you can do after
- Apply it via Kotlin `operator` functions to make supported predefined syntax work for custom or external types.
Read how Kotlin in Action, 2E explains operator overloading →
.NET in Action, Second Edition
Operator overloading is a language feature that lets a type define the behavior of an operator for its values.
- How it is used
- Makes elapsed-time calculations read naturally while supporting a stopwatch implementation.
- How deep it goes
- Defines the feature and shows its DateTime-to-TimeSpan implementation, without surveying general operator-design rules.
- Examples
- Uses stopwatch elapsed-time code, an explicit DateTime subtraction operator, and a clock-controlled restart test.
- What you can do after
- Understand how overloaded subtraction produces TimeSpan values and how clock injection makes related tests deterministic.
Read how .NET in Action, Second Edition explains operator overloading →
Related concepts
- timestampused by · A timestamp is a value representing a specific point in time, typically associated with an event, observation, or data item.
- infix functionalternative to · An infix function is a Kotlin function that can be called using infix notation with a single explicit argument between the receiver and argument.
- Gocontrasts with · Go is a statically typed, compiled, garbage-collected programming language with built-in support for concurrency.
- operator modifierconfigured by · The operator modifier is a Kotlin declaration modifier that permits a function to implement a predefined operator convention.
- stream insertion operatoruses · The C++ stream insertion operator, operator<<, writes formatted values to output streams and can be overloaded for user-defined types.
- custom operatorproduces · A custom operator is a programmer-defined operator with specified syntax and behavior, typically implemented by a function.
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