Operator commutativity

Henrik Faber hfaber at invalid.net
Mon Sep 19 07:11:51 EDT 2011


Hi there,

when I have a python class X which overloads an operator, I can use that
operator to do any operation for example with an integer

y = X() + 123

however, say I want the "+" operator to be commutative. Then

y = 123 + X()

should have the same result. However, since it does not call __add__ on
an instance of X, but on the int 123, this fails:

TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for +: 'int' and 'X'

How can I make this commutative?

Best regards,
Henrik



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