MATLAB Programming

Overloading Operators and Functions
Overloading Operators and Functions
In many cases, you may want to change the behavior of the MATLAB operators
and functions for cases when the arguments are objects. You can accomplish
this by overloading the relevant functions. Overloading enables a function
to handle different types and numbers of input arguments and perform
whatever operation is appropriate for the highest-precedence object. See
“Object Precedence” on page 9-70 for more information on object precedence.
This section covers
• “Overloading Operators” on page 9-23
• “Overloading Functions” on page 9-25
Overloading Operators
Each built-in MATLAB operator has an associated function name (e.g., the +
operator has an associated plus.m function). You can overload any operator
by creating an M-file with the appropriate name in the class directory. For
example, if either p or q is an object of type classname, the expression
p + q
generates a call to a function @classname/plus.m, ifitexists.Ifp and q are
both objects of different classes, then MATLAB applies the rules of precedence
to determine which method to use.
Examples of Overloaded Operators
See the following sections for examples of overloaded operators:
• “Overloading the + Operator” on page 9-32
• “Overloading the - Operator” on page 9-33
• “Overloading the * Operator” on page 9-33
The following table lists the function names for most of the MATLAB
operators.
9-23