babel-plugin-operator

Description

This is a babel plugin that adds operator overloading into javascript.

Examples

1

Below is an example that implemented a simple Point or Vector on a planar. We should allow programmer to add two Points or to multiply one Point by a certain factor.

class Point {
    x = 0;
    y = 0;

    constructor(_x, _y) {
		if(_x) this.x = _x;
		if(_y) this.y = _y;
    }

    operatorAdd = (b) => {
		const a = this;
		return new Point(a.x + b.x, a.y + b.y);
    }

    operatorMul = (b) => {
		const a = this;
		return new Point(a.x * b, a.y * b);
    }
};

after this, we can:

let a = new Point(1, 2), b = new Point(3, 4);

console.log(a + b * 3);

2

String.prototype.operatorMul = function(times) {
    console.log(times);
    let ret = '';
    for(let i = 1; i <= times; ++i) ret += this;
    return ret;
};

After this, we can:

let c = 'A string!';
let d = c * 3;
console.log(d);		//would be 'A string!A string!A string!'

More...

It can be more. For example, by adding this plugin with Crunch, we'll get an arbitrary-precision integer type that can be used conveniently.

Installation

Taste it now

This project can be used as a source code converter, see Principle for more information.

The fastest way to use it is downloading this repo, putting your code into source.js and execute:

npm install
node run.js source.js > dest.js

then check dest.js and run it.

Install it

For it's based on babel, you can use it wherever you can use babel. Additional source mapping will be available for you to debug.

First you should make your babel working.

And install the package.

npm install babel-plugin-operator --save

And configure your .babelrc.

{
  "presets": ["es2015", "stage-2"],
  "plugins": ["operator"]
}

Usage

First, put a magic word at the very top of your source file:

'bpo enable';

This will make the overloading available in the whole file.

After that, all you need to do is to insert a certain function into your class, which can calculate the right answer for an operator.

'+': 'operatorAdd',
'-': 'operatorSub',
'*': 'operatorMul',
'/': 'operatorDiv',
'**': 'operatorPow',

'&': 'operatorBinaryAnd',
'|': 'operatorBinaryOr',
'^': 'operatorBinaryXor',
'<<': 'operatorBinaryLShift',
'>>': 'operatorBinaryRShift',

'<': 'operatorLess',
'>': 'operatorGreater',
'<=': 'operatorLessEqual',
'>=': 'operatorGreaterEqual',
'==': 'operatorEqual',
'!=': 'operatorNotEqual',

For example, a + b will be redirected to a.operatorAdd(b). If a doesn't have a function named operatorAdd, the operator falls back to the original +.

Hint: For the comparison operators, we will call the propriate function for you. This means if you only declared a operatorLess, you will get < > <= >= all work right. Defining other functions is only needed if you need a special comparison rule such as a partial order. Same to operatorEqual and operatorNotEqual.

Principle

This is a plugin of babeljs. By simply modifying the AST, it will replace

a + b

with

_Op.add(a, b)

while _Op.add is like this:

add(a, b) {
	if(a.operatorAdd) return a.operatorAdd(b);
	else return a + b;
}

Controllers

Because that we implemented this by replacing calculations with function calls, it may cause lack of speed. Our suggestion is that we disable the overloading in some functions which have intensive computing.

The way to do this is to add a string in front of the function body as a mark:

function foo() {
	'bpo disable';
    //your code
}

Actually, the plugin is disabled by default, so we added a string 'bpo enable'; in front of the file just now. if we remove it, we can add it to certain functions that need the overloading.