Operator Overloading in Python
by Josh on 20/11/2024
How does Operator Overloading arise?
Previously, the programmers who developed what we know today as
object-oriented programming wondered how to perform normal arithmetic operations like the ones we can do, basic operations, on objects.
These operations could not be performed natively, the compiler did not recognize, and
did not know how to operate with this new data type called Object so
what we currently know as "Operator Overloading" was invented.
And this was not only for Python since it was first implemented in older languages like C++ and then brought to younger languages like today's Python, one of the most used languages today and which has gained so much popularity for its use in artificial intelligence applications.
Returning to Operator Overloading, What is it?
Although the particular name chosen to define it is not very descriptive, the explanation
as I gave at the beginning is, operator overloading is nothing more than defining the common operation we want to perform, which can be from addition to exponentiation, even boolean operations,
and then indicating to our class how this operation should be performed with its own objects.
Operators that can overload and their methods:
