Java: add two objects

Question

I was making a project in Greenfoot and I made an imaginary number class. In my project I found a need to add (or subtract, or whatever) two imaginary objects together, is there a way to add two objects like that? So this is how it would look in a perfect world:

    Imaginary i1 = new Imaginary(1.7,3.14);
    Imaginary i2 = new Imaginary(5.3,9.1);
    //the class Imaginary has parameters (double real, double imaginary)
    Imaginary i3 = i1+i2;

Is that possible?

Answer 1

What you are describing is called "Operator overloading" and it cannot be accomplished in Java (at least by programmers such as you and me; the developers have free reign to do this and did so with the String class). Instead, you can create an add method and call that:

Imaginary i3 = i1.add(i2);

Answer 2

Java has no operator overloading.

For example, BigDecimal would be a lot more popular if you could write a + b instead of a.add(b).

Way 1.

Imaginary i3 = i1.add(i2);

Method:

public static Imaginary add(Imaginary i2)
{
    return new Imaginary(real + i2.real, imaginary + i2.imaginary);
}

Way 2.

Imaginary i3 = add(i1, i2)

Method:

public static Imaginary add(Imaginary i1, Imaginary i2)
{
    return new Imaginary(i1.real + i2.real, i1.imaginary + i2.imaginary);
}

Operator overloading would have definitely made design more complex than without it, and it might have led to more complex compiler or slows the JVM.