Programming Elixir ≥ 1.6

Macros and Operators

(This is definitely dangerous ground.)

We can override the unary and binary operators in Elixir using macros. To do so, we need to remove any existing definition first.

For example, the operator + (which adds two numbers) is defined in the Kernel module. To remove the Kernel definition and substitute our own, we’d need to do something like the following (which redefines addition to concatenate the string representation of the left and right arguments).

macros/operators.ex

defmodule Operators do
  defmacro a + b do
    quote do
      to_string(unquote(a)) <> to_string(unquote(b))
    end
  end
end

defmodule Test do
  IO.puts(123 + 456)             #=> "579"
  import Kernel, except: [+: 2]
  import Operators ...