Question

is it possible to define an extension method that at the same time is an operator?
I want for a fixed class add the possibility to use a known operator that actually can’t be applied.
For this particular case i want to do this:

   somestring++;  //i really know that this string contains a numeric value

And i don’t want to spread types conversions for all the code.
I know that i could create wrapper class over an string and define that operator but i want to know if this kind of thing is possible to avoid search-and-replace every string declaration with MySpecialString.

Edited: as most have say string is sealed, so derivation isn’t possible, so i modify “derived” to “wrapper”, my mistake.

Answer 1

No, it is not possible to do from outside of the class. ++ operator should be defined inside class which is being incremented. You can either create your own class which will be convertible from string and will have ++ overload or you can forget about this idea and use regular methods.