Re: User definable operators

William Clodius <wclodius@lanl.gov> writes:
>Many programming languages allow the user to overload of language
>defined operators. But a few languages also allow the user to define
>their own operators. I would like to have some feedback on the
>experience of others with user definable operators with respect to
>specifying their syntax, associativity, precedence, semantics (e.g.,
>side effects or not), etc.
[...]


>[My experience with such languages has been miserable. It means that no
>two programs are actually written in the same language, so they're all
>unreadable. Extensible languages enjoyed a short vogue in the 1970s, and
>I wasn't sad to see them go. See Cheatham's EL/1 and Irons' IMP72. -John]


John:
      Does this comment of yours apply to C++ too?


Everyone:
      Is the tide turning against C++ ?
      That is, has C++ gone too far in this direction?


--
dennis@netcom.com (Dennis Yelle)
[At least C++ doesn't let you invent your own syntax. As some other people
have noted, you can do it right or you can do it wrong, e.g., overloading
the arithmetic operators to handle bignums makes sense, using them for
string packages becomes baffling. -John]
--

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