Does dart support operator overloading
The chosen answer is no longer valid when you try overloads using the ==
operator in the new version. Now you need to do this:
class MyClass {
@override
bool operator ==(other) {
// compare this to other
}
}
But it's not safe. other
is not specified as a type, Something unexpected may happened. For example:
void main() {
var a = A(1);
var b = B(1);
var result = a == b;
print(result); //result is true
}
class A {
A(this.index);
final int index;
@override
bool operator ==(other) => other.index == index;
}
class B {
B(this.index);
final int index;
}
So you could do like this:
class A {
A(this.index);
final int index;
@override
bool operator ==(covariant A other) => other.index == index;
}
You need to use covariant
. Because Object overloads the ==
operator.
or you can
Test Object Type:
visit: hash_and_equals
class A {
A(this.index);
final int index;
@override
bool operator ==(other) => other is A && (other.index == index);
@override
int get hashCode => index;
}
Dart does support operator overloading using the operator keyword followed by the operator you want to overload. The following example overloads the == operator for the MyClass object:
class MyClass {
operator ==(MyClass other) {
// compare this to other
}
}
almost all Darts built-in operators can be overloaded with a few notable exceptions being the assignment operator = and reference equivalence operator === (doesn't exist anymore).
As for the advantage of operator overloading, it allows you to reuse operators that have a well known semantic meaning such as == or + for operations on your objects. For example, if you have a Matrix class that overloads the + operator then you can add two matrices using the syntax m1 + m2 instead of the more cumbersome m1.plus(m2)