[Python-Dev] Why not support user defined operator overloading ? (original) (raw)

Steven D'Aprano steve at pearwood.info
Sun Sep 29 17:33:38 CEST 2013

On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 08:51:37PM +0800, 张佩佩 wrote:

Hello: As far as I know, there is not a language support user defined operator overloading. Python3 can overloading belowed operators. [...] (Do I miss something ?)

Yes, many.

http://docs.python.org/3/reference/datamodel.html#special-method-names http://docs.python.org/3/reference/datamodel.html#emulating-numeric-types

If we can overloading these operators, why we can't overloading other operators? (like .* often used in matrix, U in set operation)

http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0211/ http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0225/

There is a good argument for being able to overload element-wise and object-wise operators. However, I don't think it is good to be able to create arbitrary new operators, e.g. a X b for an X operator. We already have syntax for arbitrary functions, and they aren't limited to binary operators: X(a, b, c, d, ...) works better than a X b for most uses.

-- Steven

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