Book Image

Learning Object-Oriented Programming

By : Gaston C. Hillar
Book Image

Learning Object-Oriented Programming

By: Gaston C. Hillar

Overview of this book

Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Learning Object-Oriented Programming
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgments
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Understanding operator overloading


Some programming languages, such as C# and Python, allow you to redefine specific operators to work in a different way based on the classes in which we apply them. For example, we can use comparison operators—such as less than (<) and greater than (>)—to return the results of comparing the age value when they are applied to instances of Dog.

Tip

The redefinition of operators to work in a specific way when applied to instances of specific classes is known as operator overloading.

An operator that works in one way when applied to an instance of a class may work differently on instances of another class. We can also override the overloaded operators in subclasses. For example, we can make comparison operators work in a different way in a superclass and its subclasses.