haxe Abstracts Operator overloading

Example

Operator overloading is only possible with abstract types.

The following abstract defines a Vec2i type based on the Array<Int> type. This is a two-component vector with integer values. Operator overloading is made possible my the @:op compiler metadata. Only the available numeric operators can be overloaded - custom operators are not allowed to be specified.

abstract Vec2i(Array<Int>) {
    public inline function getX() : Int {
        return this[0];
    }
    
    public inline function getY() : Int {
        return this[1];
    }
    
    public inline function new(x : Int, y : Int) {
        this = [x, y];
    }
    
    @:op(A + B)
    public inline function add(B : Vec2i) : Vec2i {
        return new Vec2i(
            getX() + B.getX(),
            getY() + B.getY()
        );
    }
}

Use the abstract as follows.

var v1 = new Vec2i(1, 2);
var v2 = new Vec2i(3, 4);
v1 + v2;
v1.add(v2);

Try the example on try.haxe.org.

References

• "EmailAddress", Haxe Code Cookbook