'can' operator?

[pg]

I was wondering about something. I can check whether a class has a certain method, by calling can, for example,

use Math::Complex;
print "plus is supported\n" if (Math::Complex->can("plus"));

It works. I checked the Math::Complex module, the overloaded “+” actually calls this 'plus' function. Now, is it not normal for me to expect that, the following should work?

use Math::Complex;
print "+ is supported\n" if (Math::Complex->can("+"));

But it does not, even though “+” is overloaded for this class. My question is:

1. Did I do something wrong? If yes, then what is the correct syntax to check whether an operator is overloaded?
2. If I didn’t do anything wrong, is it not nice for Perl to support a unified interface for checking whether a method, or operator is supported? They are both operations you can apply on a class/object though. Also, you remember those operators by their symbols, for example "+", not by the methods under, for example, if I didn't check the Complex.pm, how can I know that "+" is actually "plus"?

[broquaint]

Did I do something wrong? If yes, then what is the correct syntax to check whether an operator is overloaded?

Yes, can only checks whether a given class/object implements a method, not whether operators overloaded. For that you'll want overload::Method from the overload module.
HTH

_________
broquaint

[Zaxo]

The overload pragmatic provides a couple of functions you can use for that.

• overload::Overloaded('$foo+1') takes a perl expression as a string and tells you whether any of its operators are overloaded in the context of that expression.
• overload::Method($obj,'+') returns a code reference to the method overloading '+' for $obj, or undef if not overloaded.

After Compline,
Zaxo