On Saturday, 13 October 2012 at 10:00:22 UTC, Tommi wrote:
On Saturday, 13 October 2012 at 09:50:05 UTC, Jonathan M Davis
wrote:
It is most definitely _by design_ that you cannot
overload operators except as member functions.
I don't understand this design choice then. I don't see any
problem in allowing UFCS operators. Because of the way UFCS
works, it's guaranteed that there can't be any operator
hijacking.
I think implementing UFCS operator overloading is problematic.
Firstly, you want to put this language addition too far.
Secondly, compiler needs to know whether operator was overloaded
or not. If it knows, it generates code to call "opSomething", if
nor - it just doesn't generate anything. Now, imagine what would
happen if you write in some module "free" function, supposed to
hijack operator overloading method of class or struct in another
module. If you compile them together, operator would be
overloaded, if separately - nothing would happen. This means that
operator overloading would depend on with what you compile your
module - sometimes nothing would be overloaded, sometimes it
would be with one function, sometimes with another. Thirdly, I
see no reason in allowing it - for what purpose does you proposal
service for?
