Why must I define a commutative operator twice?

Question

I wonder if I must define a commutative operator (like *) twice!

public static MyClass operator *(int i, MyClass m)
{
    return new MyClass(i *         


        

Answer 1

You don't have to do that - you only need to do that if you want to be able to write:

MyClass x = ...;

MyClass y = x * 5;
MyClass z = 5 * x;

If you only want one of the bottom two lines to be valid, you can delete the other operator overload.

Basically, the C# language doesn't assume that multiplication is commutative even in terms of the types involved.