CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby
Aayush
Aayush

Reputation: 1254

Does an operator in Ruby belong to only one particular class?

Do operators in Ruby belong to a particular class ? As per my knowledge operators are tokens which are redefined by classes according to the operation they are intended to perform. For example the Numeric class defines the + operator for numeric operations, similarly the String class defines it for string concatenation. So based on that if i try to do this:

    +.is_a ? (Numeric)

It returns false. Is my explanation to this question correct ?

Sorry for all the confusion this is the actual question from my assignment.What class does + belong to and how do you check it ?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 151

Answers (3)

Michał Szajbe
Michał Szajbe

Reputation: 9002

Most of what is an operator in other programming languages, is just a method in Ruby.

+ is a method not an operator. You can get reference to it:

1.method(:+)
#=> #<Method: Fixnum#+>

"".method(:+)
#=> #<Method: String#+>

Fixnum and String are ones of many classes that implement + method. You can define your own operator-like methods:

class MyClass
  attr_accessor :number, :string

  def +(other)
    self.number += other.number
    self.string += other.string
    self
  end
end

Examples of true operators in Ruby, you can't define your own methods with some of these 'names':

  • assignment operators: =
  • action AND assignment: +=, -=, *=, /=, %=, **=
  • bitwise operators: &, |, ^, ~, <<, >>
  • logical operators: and, or, &&, ||, !, not
  • ternary operator: ? :
  • range operators: .., ...
  • dot and double colon: ., ::

There is also a special operator defined?. It actually looks like a method but it's an operator. You can define your own defined? method, though.

Upvotes: 2

J&#246;rg W Mittag
J&#246;rg W Mittag

Reputation: 369498

It is pretty confusing what you mean by "belong to class". From your code snippet, it looks like you mean "instance of class".

If that is what you mean, then the answer is: the question doesn't make sense. Operators aren't objects. Therefore they cannot possibly be instances of classes.

Upvotes: 1

Hauleth
Hauleth

Reputation: 23576

No. It dont belong to particural class because any class can has it own + method. That what you try to do was simply checking the + operator for the program class. To see that in Ruby everything is a class just run this script

#!/usr/bin/ruby

puts self.inspect

Upvotes: 1

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