When Should You Overload the Comma Operator in C ?

When to Employ Comma Operator Overloading

While overloading the comma operator is not frequently discussed in C , misconceptions surrounding it have raised the question of its practical applications.

Appropriate Use Cases

One situation where comma operator overloading proves valuable is when working with maps that require multiple indices. Consider the following example:

<code class="c++">enum Place {new_york, washington, ...};

pair<Place, Place> operator , (Place p1, Place p2)
{
    return make_pair(p1, p2);
}

map< pair<Place, Place>, double> distance;
distance[new_york, washington] = 100;</code>

In this scenario, the overloaded comma operator allows for convenient indexing of the map using two values. The constructed pair is then used as the map key.

Note: It's worth mentioning that overloading the comma operator without parentheses is deprecated as of C 20 and removed in C 23. Therefore, it's essential to enclose it within parentheses for compatibility with the latest C versions.

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