How to implement idiomatic operator overloading for values and references in Rust?
The great thing about Rust is that it's open source. This means you can see how the authors of the language have solved a problem. The closest analogue is primitive integer types:
macro_rules! add_impl {
($($t:ty)*) => ($(
#[stable(feature = "rust1", since = "1.0.0")]
impl Add for $t {
type Output = $t;
#[inline]
fn add(self, other: $t) -> $t { self + other }
}
forward_ref_binop! { impl Add, add for $t, $t }
)*)
}
forward_ref_binop
is defined as:
macro_rules! forward_ref_binop {
(impl $imp:ident, $method:ident for $t:ty, $u:ty) => {
#[stable(feature = "rust1", since = "1.0.0")]
impl<'a> $imp<$u> for &'a $t {
type Output = <$t as $imp<$u>>::Output;
#[inline]
fn $method(self, other: $u) -> <$t as $imp<$u>>::Output {
$imp::$method(*self, other)
}
}
#[stable(feature = "rust1", since = "1.0.0")]
impl<'a> $imp<&'a $u> for $t {
type Output = <$t as $imp<$u>>::Output;
#[inline]
fn $method(self, other: &'a $u) -> <$t as $imp<$u>>::Output {
$imp::$method(self, *other)
}
}
#[stable(feature = "rust1", since = "1.0.0")]
impl<'a, 'b> $imp<&'a $u> for &'b $t {
type Output = <$t as $imp<$u>>::Output;
#[inline]
fn $method(self, other: &'a $u) -> <$t as $imp<$u>>::Output {
$imp::$method(*self, *other)
}
}
}
}
It's certainly valid to write wrapper implementations of the traits for references that simply dereference and call the value-oriented version.
I advise you to use the impl_os crate for that purpose, see that other answer that I wrote.