Re: Definable operators

Our moderator writes:
>[Plus for string concatenation? Yuck. Too much tiny basic. More to
>the point, it's a poor choice since concatenation and addition are not
>the same thing. What does a+b mean if a is a string and b an int? ...


This is what my original "rule of thumb" posting was getting at. The
issue is not the original author's convenience; the issue is
readability and maintainability, with people other than the author
involved. (This is the difference between amateur and professional
programming.)


People can cope with plus used to mean addition on numbers, even odd
kinds of numbers, or things very similar to numbers. But when plus
sometimes means addition, and sometimes means string concatenation (a
very different operation, despite some limited similarities), trouble
is likely.


People can handle small doses of this kind of thing, particularly when
the operators are ones that aren't really very familiar as numeric
operators (e.g., ">>"). It's when you're tackling something difficult
that the extra mental complexity becomes a serious handicap.
--
| Henry Spencer
| henry@zoo.toronto.edu
--

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