Rules of thumb for when to use operator overloading in python

Question

From what I remember from my C++ class, the professor said that operator overloading is cool, but since it takes relatively a lot of thought and code to cover all end-cases

Answer 1

Operator overloading is mostly useful when you're making a new class that falls into an existing "Abstract Base Class" (ABC) -- indeed, many of the ABCs in standard library module collections rely on the presence of certain special methods (and special methods, one with names starting and ending with double underscores AKA "dunders", are exactly the way you perform operator overloading in Python). This provides good starting guidance.

For example, a Container class must override special method __contains__, i.e., the membership check operator item in container (as in, if item in container: -- don't confuse with the for statement, for item in container:, which relies on __iter__!-). Similarly, a Hashable must override __hash__, a Sized must override __len__, a Sequence or a Mapping must override __getitem__, and so forth. (Moreover, the ABCs can provide your class with mixin functionality -- e.g., both Sequence and Mapping can provide __contains__ on the basis of your supplied __getitem__ override, and thereby automatically make your class a Container).

Beyond the collections, you'll want to override special methods (i.e. provide for operator overloading) mostly if your new class "is a number". Other special cases exist, but resist the temptation of overloading operators "just for coolness", with no semantic connection to the "normal" meanings, as C++'s streams do for << and >> and Python strings (in Python 2.*, fortunately not in 3.* any more;-) do for % -- when such operators do not any more mean "bit-shifting" or "division remainder", you're just engendering confusion. A language's standard library can get away with it (though it shouldn't;-), but unless your library gets as widespread as the language's standard one, the confusion will hurt!-)