Table of Contents
Operators
The XL programming language defines several new operators, including arrow operators whose main purpose is to be used within production statements and which have no built-in meaning, i. e., they always refer to operator methods. The new operators a ** b, a <=> b and `a` have a built-in semantics which is described in the following. A complete list of all operators including their precedence is given there.
Exponentiation
The binary exponentiation operator a ** b is defined for operands of type float or double and computes the value a raised to the power of b. The computation is implemented by the method pow of java.lang.Math.
Comparison
The binary comparison operator a <=> b is defined for operands of numeric type. Its result type is int, and the value is 0 if a == b, 1 if a > b and -1 otherwise. The last case includes a < b, but also cases where a or b is Not-a-Number.
Quote
The unary quote operator `a` is defined for operands of any type and performs the identity operation, i. e., type and value are determined by the operand a. Thus, it is the same as (a), but the quote operator may be overloaded. This operator can be used for node patterns and node expressions if expressions have to be parenthesized, but normal parentheses cannot be used for syntactical reasons.
Shift
XL inherits the binary operators left shift (<<), right shift (>>) and unsigned right shift (>>>). Moreover it adds the unsigned left shift operator (<<<).
This operator can not be used for bit operations since it is logically not possible to have an unsigned left shift in bit operation. It is only added to GroIMP for overloading (operator$ushl).