Operator (computer Programming) - Operator Overloading

Operator Overloading

Operators are elements in a program that are usually used to assist in testing conditions (OR, AND, =, >, etc.)

Example: IF ORDER_DATE > "12/31/2011" AND ORDER_DATE < "01/01/2013" THEN CONTINUE ELSE STOP
The operators in the example above are: ">" (greater than), "AND", "<" (less than)

In some programming languages an operator may be ad-hoc polymorphic, that is, have definitions for more than one kind of data, (such as in Java where the + operator is used both for the addition of numbers and for the concatenation of strings). Such an operator is said to be overloaded. In languages that support operator overloading by the programmer but have a limited set of operators, operator overloading is often used to define customized uses for operators.