Concatenate two strings using Operator Overloading in Python

Operator Overloading refers to using the same operator to perform different tasks by passing different types of data as arguments. To understand how ‘+’ operator works in two different ways in python let us take the following example

Python3

# taking two numbers
a = 2
b = 3

# using '+' operator add them
c = a+b

# printing the result
print("The sum of these two numbers is ", c)

Output:

The sum of these two numbers is  5

In this example we used ‘+’ operator to add numbers, now let us take one more example to understand how ‘+’ operator is used to concatenate strings.

Python3

# taking two strings from the user
a = 'abc'
b = 'def'

# using '+' operator concatenate them
c = a+b

# printing the result
print("After Concatenation the string becomes", c)

Output:

After Concatenation the string becomes abcdef

For a better understanding of operator overloading, here is an example where a common method is used for both purposes.

Python3

# let us define a class with add method
class operatoroverloading:

    def add(self, a, b):
        self.c = a+b
        return self.c


# creating an object of class
obj = operatoroverloading()

# using add method by passing integers
# as argument
result = obj.add(23, 9)
print("sum is", result)

# using same add method by passing strings
# as argument
result = obj.add("23", "9")
print("Concatenated string is", result)

Output:

sum is 32
Concatenated string is 239