Custom Implicit Conversion in Java

Question

In C# I can create my own implicit conversion for my classes as follows...

public static implicit operator TypeYouWantToChangeTo (ClassYouAreChanging c)  
{ 
    TypeYouWantToChangeTo x;
    //convert c to x
    return x;
}

How do you make a class be able to implicitly convert to another class? Also in C# I can change implicit to explicit to also create the ability to cast manually. How do you accomplish this in Java?

Answer 1

You can not overload operators with Java. Add a method to your class of choice to perform the conversion. For example:

public class Blammy
{
    public static final Blammy blammyFromHooty(final Hooty hoot)
    {
        Blammy returnValue;

        // convert from Hooty to Blammy.

        return returnValue;
    }
}

Edit

• Only built-in types have implicit conversions.
• Explicit conversion (in java) is called a cast. for example, int q = 15; double x = (double) q;
• There can never be implicit conversions of your custom types.
• extends and implements are not conversion.
• All implicit conversions are for primitive types.