C# operator Keyword

Use the operator keyword to develop overloaded binary and unary operators.

Operator. Consider a class instance. You cannot use a plus sign to add 2 classes together. But sometimes this makes logical sense—it should be possible.

With overloaded operators, we can overload the plus sign (and other symbols). Overloaded operators sometimes improve program syntax.

Details: With the operator keyword, public static operator methods used by the compiler when the designated operators are encountered.

Keywords

This program declares a Widget class. Here, Widgets can be added together or incremented. In the Widget class, we provide 2 public static methods: operator +, and operator ++.Class

Return: The methods return an instance of Widget. They receive 2 or 1 parameters—for binary (+) or unary (++).

Main: Here a new Widget instance is created and it uses the increment ++ operator. Its value is increased by 1, two times.

Increment

Next: Another Widget is created. And finally we add the 2 widgets together with a single "+" operator.

So: When we add the 2 Widgets together, a new Widget is returned. This is conceptually the same way the string type works.

C# program that uses operator keyword using System; class Widget { public int _value; public static Widget operator +(Widget a, Widget b) { // Add two Widgets together. // ... Add the two int values and return a new Widget. Widget widget = new Widget(); widget._value = a._value + b._value; return widget; } public static Widget operator ++(Widget w) { // Increment this widget. w._value++; return w; } } class Program { static void Main() { // Increment widget twice. Widget w = new Widget(); w++; Console.WriteLine(w._value); w++; Console.WriteLine(w._value); // Create another widget. Widget g = new Widget(); g++; Console.WriteLine(g._value); // Add two widgets. Widget t = w + g; Console.WriteLine(t._value); } } Output 1 2 1 3

Operator list. Many but not all operators in the C# language can be overloaded. This comes from the C# specification, which has more in-depth information on overloading.

Unary operators you can overload + - ! ~ ++ -- true false Binary operators you can overload + - * / % & | ^ << >> == != > < >= <=

Discussion. It is not necessary to overload operators on every class you create. My opinion is that overloading operators is rarely required. It helps only on types that are commonly used.

Example: In the .NET Framework itself, the string type has overloads and these are useful (this is how concatenation works).

Strings string.Concat

Thus: If you have a type that will be used in many places, then overloading it could be a good idea.

A summary. The operator keyword is used for overloading binary and unary operators. We provided an example of operator overloading. We saw a list of all the overloadable C# operators.

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C# operator Keyword

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