operator overloading outside the type

[ltdk]

On Sunday, 30 March 2025 at 05:30:42 UTC, sfp wrote:

>
> I want to be able to define standard mathematical operators for 
> standard mathematical entities (numbers, matrices, polynomials, 
> etc). My code is nontrivial because of the domain I work in, 
> not because of the code itself. By and large, D has helped make 
> the code I've written significantly shorter, clearer, and more 
> understandable than the equivalent C++ code I would have 
> written. In the past I'd all but given up on doing any serious 
> metaprogramming in C++ because of the abysmal compile times, 
> and now I can actually do it. It's damn useful and has made my 
> life easier. It's really a testament to how well designed the 
> language is and how well the features come together.
>
> Not being able to define operators as free functions was a 
> surprising restriction. I've done my best to understand the 
> technical issues surrounding this feature, and my assessment is 
> that there is no real impediment to enabling it other than 
> generational trauma inherited from C++.

You may want to try Julia. It supports multiple dispatch, 
operator overloading as free functions.
Look at how [operators on Sparse Arrays are 
implemented](https://github.com/JuliaSparse/SparseArrays.jl/blob/9a4656134eece3483216ce1244bd0b3a20aee6f1/src/linalg.jl#L214). It's soo good.