Editing Operator overloading (section)

==Rationale {{Anchor|Motive}}==
Operator overloading is [[syntactic sugar]], and is used because it allows programming using notation nearer to the target domain<ref>{{cite web |website=C++ FAQ |title=Operator Overloading |url=https://isocpp.org/wiki/faq/operator-overloading#op-ov-benefits |last=Stroustrup |first=Bjarne |author-link=Bjarne Stroustrup |access-date=27 August 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110814105309/http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/operator-overloading.html#faq-13.2 |archive-date=14 August 2011}}</ref> and allows user-defined types a similar level of syntactic support as types built into a language. It is common, for example, in scientific computing, where it allows computing representations of mathematical objects to be manipulated with the same syntax as on paper.

Operator overloading does not change the [[Expressive power (computer science)|expressive power]] of a language (with functions), as it can be emulated using function calls. For example, consider variables {{code|a}}, {{code|b}} and {{code|c}} of some user-defined type, such as [[Matrix (mathematics)|matrices]]:

{{code|a + b * c}}

In a language that supports operator overloading, and with the usual assumption that the {{code|*}} operator has higher [[Order of operations|precedence]] than the {{code|+}} operator, this is a concise way of writing:

{{code|Add(a, Multiply(b, c))}}

However, the former syntax reflects common mathematical usage.