opEquals/opCmp returning other types

[Paulo Pinto]

I think the only people who have issues with operator definitions don't
think of them as function names, in the abstract mathematics sense.

+, < and so on are just simbolic names for some operation.

If I want to know what + does, I have to do the same as when I see Add, and
look to the definition being called.

--
Paulo

"Brian Palmer"  wrote in message 
news:bafsgxezdurhidyvveaz at forum.dlang.org...

On Monday, 19 March 2012 at 01:29:50 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:

> In C++, for example, you can define operator<() and operator>() in
> completely arbitrary ways, which means they can be totally unrelated to
> each other, and return results that have nothing to do with each other.
> This causes inconsistency in that a<b does not necessarily imply b>a,
> and vice versa. Which makes for inconsistent code.

While I totally get that concern, I've never really seen it
become a real issue in any of the large C++ systems I've worked
on. Maybe I've just been lucky? Ruby also allows these arbitrary
operator redefinitions, and it's never been an issue in the large
Ruby systems I've worked on, either. Python also allows them,
though I don't have much Python experience.

In fact, a lot of the most useful DSLs in Ruby rely heavily on
being able to do these overrides. I think D today is missing out
on a lot of those possibilities.