[571] in java-interest
Re: Operator overloading (was BigInteger)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Patrick Doane)
Sat Jul 1 20:35:21 1995
Date: Sat, 1 Jul 1995 17:21:01 -0400
To: java-interest@java.Eng.Sun.COM
From: pdoane@pcnet.com (Patrick Doane)
>I assume you are referring to the commutative property, e.g. a + b == b + a.
>This is a _mathematical_ property, and people simply assume that it holds
>in programming as well. This assumption must be dealt with by making it
>very clear that just because a mathematical operator is used in a language
>the operation may not follow mathematical convention - and in fact the
>behavior of the operator may not follow mathematical convention, as of
>course is the case with Strings.
>
The problem I have with the operator overloading of the + operator is that
there is no way for (at least from experience), to have:
s1 = s2 + s3 + s4 + s5
translate to:
s1.assign(s2)
s1.append(s3)
s1.append(s4)
s1.append(s5)
It usually constructs too many temporary objects in the mean time to be a
tool I would want to use. I'm glad that Java has built string operations
into the language so that they can be used as expected.
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