Re: Proposal for a standard way of defining custom operators in Lua

[Enrico Colombini <erix@...>]

On 25/07/2013 14.03, steve donovan wrote:
> Even in C++, the standard library makes very sparing use of operator
> overloading, + for strings, << & >> for stream reading/writing, [] for maps.
>
> I agree with Lorenzo that otherwise an impressive string of symbols is an
> attempt to make 'code' (source) look like 'code' (a secret cipher).  Not a
> good fit for a DSL intended for non-professional programmers!

When I first encountered C++ operator overloading (around 1990), I 
thought "Wow! Great!" and used them extensively. Then I gradually moved 
to "Not so great after all" and finally to "Best avoided" (except in 
cases such as numeric types).

I still get confused by which one of "<<" / ">>" means "in" and which 
one means "out" (when do data move from right to left?). Fortunately I 
also learned to stay clear of the stream library altogether :-)

--
  Enrico