Question

Do operators in Ruby belong to a particular class ? As per my knowledge operators are tokens which are redefined by classes according to the operation they are intended to perform. For example the Numeric class defines the + operator for numeric operations, similarly the String class defines it for string concatenation. So based on that if i try to do this:

    +.is_a ? (Numeric)

It returns false. Is my explanation to this question correct ?

Sorry for all the confusion this is the actual question from my assignment.What class does + belong to and how do you check it ?

Answer 1

Most of what is an operator in other programming languages, is just a method in Ruby.

+ is a method not an operator. You can get reference to it:

1.method(:+)
#=> #<Method: Fixnum#+>

"".method(:+)
#=> #<Method: String#+>

Fixnum and String are ones of many classes that implement + method. You can define your own operator-like methods:

class MyClass
  attr_accessor :number, :string

  def +(other)
    self.number += other.number
    self.string += other.string
    self
  end
end

Examples of true operators in Ruby, you can’t define your own methods with some of these ‘names’:

• assignment operators: =
• action AND assignment: +=, -=, *=, /=, %=, **=
• bitwise operators: &, |, ^, ~, <<, >>
• logical operators: and, or, &&, ||, !, not
• ternary operator: ? :
• range operators: .., ...
• dot and double colon: ., ::

There is also a special operator defined?. It actually looks like a method but it’s an operator. You can define your own defined? method, though.