On Thu, 24 Jan 2008, Frank Barknecht wrote:
overloading like the other languages, so aliases are the workaround we use. But the use is similar: Operator overloading includes adding an additional name and syntax for a function/method: A = Matrix.new(m,n) B = Matrix.new(n,m) C = Matrix.multipy(A,B) now with an overloaded operator* you can also say: C = A*B.
You absolutely don't need to have an original name like "multiply" that you alias to "operator*". You can define "operator*" on its own and that's all. It's not like you need any operator to be the shortcut of something already existing.
(JAVA might be different because libraries were first designed without operator support, which was then added later. in that case, "shortcut for..." makes sense)
True operator overloading of course would mean, that you could user the regular "+" object for matrices in Pd as well.
You can't even do that in C++. If you have a class that makes additions, you can't modify that to support other kinds of additions without touching the source file. You can't do that in Python either. You _can_ do it in Ruby.
You may ask yourself what is the proper kind of analogy to do in this context: is a [+] class in pd similar to an Addition class in C++, or is it similar to a + method in a class of numbers? Depends. Pd does some things inside out, so it complicates some comparisons.
To each his own, especially with style questions, but I don't know anybody else besides Hans who prefers the long version of triggers.
Whether it's one or the other, you still have to look up the help file to know what it does. "trigger anything anything" doesn't tell you at all what's going on. Before already knowing Pd, "trigger" sounds like that would be a good name for [bang] and [bng] and such. I'd rather call it a "tee" than a "trigger".
compare with http://plumbing.hardwarestore.com/52-298-abs-fittings/abs-sanitary-tee-45626...
also compare with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tee_(Unix) but this tee can't pipe to two processes at once, so it's not so similar.
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