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What is Operator Overloading in C#?

In this article, we are going to learn about operator overloading in C#, here, we will also learn - which operators can be overloaded and which cannot be overloaded?
Submitted by IncludeHelp, on February 18, 2018

C# - Operator Overloading

It is a type of polymorphism. As we know that every operator has a pre-defined implementation. But using operator overloading we can assign some special task to c# operators with respect to user defined data-type like classes and structures.

We can overload some C# operators; all C# operators cannot be overloaded. We can overload following operators that are given below:

1. Arithmetic operators (+ - * / %)
2. Bitwise operators (& | << >>)
3. Unary operators (+ - ! ~ ++ --)
4. Relational operators (== != < > <= >=)
5. Compound assignment (+= -= *= /= %=)

We cannot overload following operators are given below:

1. Logical operators (&& ||)
2. Conversion operator ( () )
3. Assignment operator ( = )
4. Dot or membership operator ( . )
5. Conditional or ternary operator ( ?: )
6. Referential operator ( -> )
7. New operator ( new )
8. Size of operator ( sizeof() )

In C#, to overload any allowed operator we need to use operator keyword. Here we create a method with given operator like + , - and operator keyword. This method must be public and static. This method can take only value arguments, here we cannot use ref or out parameters.

Syntax:

    public static return_type operator op (Type t)
    {
	    // Statements
    }

Here, Type must be a class or strurct.