How do I Implement Operators in a Java Class

Question

I am attempting to create a unsigned integer class.

public class UnsignedInteger extends Number implements Comparable 
    { 
    ...          


        

Answer 1

No. Java does not support operator overloading.

Answer 2

There are already 5 answers saying that you cannot overload operators, but I want to point out that you can not use arithmetical operators on objects at all. They only work with primitive types (int, double, etc).

The only reason the following code compiles

Integer a = 1, b = 2;
Integer c = a + b;

is because the Java compiler compiles it as

Integer a = Integer.valueOf(1), b = Integer.valueOf(2);
Integer c = Integer.valueOf(a.intValue() + b.intValue());

If you want this to work for your UnsignedInteger, you have to extend the javac (it is possible, though).

Answer 3

Java does not support Operator Overloading. The only option you have is define methods like add(), subtract(), multiply(), etc, and write the logic there, and invoke them for particular operation.

You can have a look at BigInteger class to get an idea of how you can define methods to support various operations. And if interested, you can even go through the source code, that you can find in the src folder of your jdk home directory.

Answer 4

No you cannot override operators in Java.

Answer 5

Java doesnt support operator overloading, they consider it a bad practice, knowing that they overloaded + and += operators for the String class

Answer 6

It's not possible to override operators in Java. What you can do is define methods to represent the operations, like BigDecimal or BigInteger in the standard library do.