Can you make custom operators in C++?

Question

Is it possible to make a custom operator so you can do things like this?

if (\"Hello, world!\" contains \"Hello\") ...

Note: this is a sepa

Answer 1

There's a method thoroughly explored in 'Syntactic Aspartame' by Sander Stoks that would allow you to use the following format:

if ("Hello, world!"  "Hello") ...

In essence, you need a proxy object with the operators '<' and '>' overloaded. The proxy does all of the work; 'contains' can just be a singleton with no behavior or data of its own.

// Not my code!
const struct contains_ {} contains;

template 
struct ContainsProxy
{
    ContainsProxy(const T& t): t_(t) {}
    const T& t_;
};

template 
ContainsProxy operator<(const T& lhs, const contains_& rhs)
{
    return ContainsProxy(lhs);
}

bool operator>(const ContainsProxy& lhs, const Rect& rhs)
{
    return lhs.t_.left   <= rhs.left && 
           lhs.t_.top    <= rhs.top && 
       lhs.t_.right  >= rhs.right && 
       lhs.t_.bottom >= rhs.bottom;
}