overloadable inverse operator? ``` val i = 2 -i //...

# language-evolution

[Hullaballoonatic]

overloadable inverse operator?

val i = 2
-i // -2
~i // 0.5

val M = Matrix.ofRows(vectorOf(4, 7), vectorOf(2, 6))
// [ 4 7
//   2 6 ]
-M
// [ -4 -7
//   -2 -6 ]
~M
// [  0.6 -0.7
//   -0.2  0.4 ]

[karelpeeters]

! is still free!

[karelpeeters]

Or you can use 1 / too.

[Hullaballoonatic]

Yeah, but both operators I suggested exist in Kotlin and I like them a lot

[Hullaballoonatic]

In math ~ does actually mean inverse, too

[karelpeeters]

~ doesn't exist in Kotlin yet?

[Hullaballoonatic]

It doesn't, hence why I think it could

[Hullaballoonatic]

At the same time I think it'd be cool to have an overload able ~= which would mean "about equal to", but that would conflict with the obvious inverseAssign of my higher priority wish

[karelpeeters]

Haha that would be great for matlab users where ~= is our !=

[Hullaballoonatic]

Yeah, some languages like Matlab and lua use ~ as not where python uses it as inverse

[elizarov]

Let’s take a look at what we already have. a - b is subtraction and -b is an additive inverse. Following this logic, because a / b denotes division, then multiplicative inverse should be denoted as /b (operator unaryDiv?).

[Hullaballoonatic]

that's a fantastic suggestion as well

[Hullaballoonatic]

have there ever been any plans for using ~ in kotlin?

[Ky Leggiero]

@Hullaballoonatic probably not, for the same reasons that ^ and | were excluded; they'd prefer to keep bitwise operators as words to improve clarity. If you could (re-)define them yourself, I'd bet over 50% of Kotlin codebases would re-introduce these as the bitwise operators. Regardless of my feelsings on this, I don't think JetBrains wants that