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Metamethods
Rohansi edited this page Dec 13, 2014
·
15 revisions
Metamethods are functions that are called when performing operations on objects. They are used to implement operator overloading.
Metamethods are not allowed to override existing behavior and will only be called for the left-most value in the operation. The object containing the metamethod (x
) will be the first function argument and additional arguments will follow (y
, z
).
Metamethods can be set for an object by setting special indexes to the function you want it to call.
const endl = {};
const cout = {
__lshift: fun (x, y) {
if (y == endl)
printLn();
else
print(y);
return x;
}
};
cout << "hello " << "world" << endl;
Name | Operation | Called when... |
---|---|---|
__get |
x.y , x[y]
|
attempting to get a value that does not exist in the object |
__set |
x.y = z , x[y] = z
|
attempting to set a value that does not exist in the object |
__call |
x(...y) |
attempting to call the object |
__eq |
x == y |
checking if the object is equal to another value |
__gt |
x > y |
checking if the object is greater than another value, other operations are combinations of __eq and __gt
|
__in |
x in y |
|
__add |
x + y |
|
__sub |
x - y |
|
__mul |
x * y |
|
__div |
x / y |
|
__mod |
x % y |
|
__pow |
x ** y |
|
__neg |
-x |
|
__and |
x + y |
|
__or |
x - y |
|
__xor |
x * y |
|
__lshift |
x / y |
|
__rshift |
x % y |
|
__not |
~x |
|
__number |
n/a | implicitly converting the object to a number |
__bool |
n/a | implciitly converting the object to a bool |
__string |
n/a | implicitly or explicitly converting the object to a string |
__serialize |
n/a | the object is being serialized, does not need to return a string |