How do I overload an operator for an enumeration in C#?

Question

I have an enumerated type that I would like to define the >, <, >=, and <= operators for. I know that these operators are implictly created on the basis of the enumerated type (as per the documentation) but I would like to explictly define these operators (for clarity, for control, to know how to do it, etc...)

I was hoping I could do something like:

public enum SizeType {     Small = 0,     Medium = 1,     Large = 2,     ExtraLarge = 3 }  public SizeType operator >(SizeType x, SizeType y) {  } 

But this doesn't seem to work ("unexpected token") ... is this possible? It seems like it should be since there are implictly defined operators. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

You can't do that. You can only provide overloaded operators for classes and structs you define -- and at least one of the parameters should be of type of the class or struct itself. That is, you can declare an overloaded addition operator that adds a MyClass to MyEnum but you can never do that with two MyEnum values.

Answer 2

As other mentioned before, one cannot override operators on Enums, but you can do it on struct. See an example below. Let me know if it helped:

public struct SizeType {     private int InternalValue { get; set; }      public static readonly int Small = 0;     public static readonly int Medium = 1;     public static readonly int Large = 2;     public static readonly int ExtraLarge = 3;      public override bool Equals(object obj)     {         SizeType otherObj = (SizeType)obj;         return otherObj.InternalValue.Equals(this.InternalValue);     }      public static bool operator >(SizeType left, SizeType right)     {         return (left.InternalValue > right.InternalValue);     }      public static bool operator <(SizeType left, SizeType right)     {         return (left.InternalValue < right.InternalValue);     }      public static implicit operator SizeType(int otherType)     {         return new SizeType         {             InternalValue = otherType         };     } }  public class test11 {     void myTest()     {         SizeType smallSize = SizeType.Small;         SizeType largeType = SizeType.Large;         if (smallSize > largeType)         {             Console.WriteLine("small is greater than large");         }     } }