Operator Overloading

Operator overloading allows for the specification of user-defined implementations of operators in operations involving one or two operands of a user-defined class or struct type.

Operator overloading delivers more capabilities when applied to user-defined data types. Only unary, binary, and comparison operators can be overloaded; however, comparison operators have a restriction. Comparison operators must be overloaded in pairs, e.g., overload both the < and > operators.

The conditional logical, indexing, cast, assignment, and those that follow cannot be overloaded:

= checked
. unchecked
?: default
?: default
?? delegate
-> is
=> new
f(x) sizeof
as typeof

Note that despite any restrictions new conversion operators can be defined, and indexers can be defined.

OVERLOADING

Create a method in a custom class with the right signature for overloading. Use the keyword operator followed by the operator or operator name to name the method. Follow the name with a single parameter for unary operators and two parameters for binary operators. One parameter must be of a type identical to the class or struct in which its declaration appears. Review an example of an operator overload below: 

public static Cube operator+ (Cube x, Cube y)
{
	Cube cube = new Cube();
	cube.length = x.length + y.length;
	cube.breadth = x.breadth + y.breadth;
	cube.height = x.height + y.height;
	return cube;
}

The previous method employs the + operator in a user-defined class named “Cube.” After adding the attributes of 2 Cube objects, it returns the resulting Cube object.

The shortcut tool (=>) can be applied to the method. Consider this example: 

public static Complex operator +(Complex cx, Complex cy) =>
	new Complex(cx.real + cy.real, cx.imaginary + cy.imaginary);
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