The Zen Of Cmp

You are not allowed to overload operators in golang. Instead, custom structs need to implement desired math operators by name.

When would you need to overload operators anyway?

Money Type

In financial software, you can use a money type to prevent combining different currencies.

package money

type Money struct {
    currency string
    amount int64
}

func (a Money) Add(b Money) Money {
    if a.currency != b.currency {
        panic("currency mismatch")
    }
    return Money{
        currency: a.currency,
        amount: a.amount + b.amount,
    }
}

Clever idea, Mint.com?

So you can add money.

func main() {
    a := Money{"USD", 1000}
    b := Money{"USD", 200}
    c := a.Add(b)
}

It works, but doesn't provide equality operators.

func main() {    
    a > b    // invalid operation: a > b (operator > not defined on struct)
}

Write All The Ops?

First instinct is to write out each operator on the struct.

func (a Money) Lte(b Money) bool {
    if a.currency != b.currency {
        panic("currency mismatch")
    }
    return a.amount <= b.amount
}

// .. Lt .. Gt .. Gte ..

It works, but it's repetitive.

Cmp

I noticed in the math/big package instead of implementing equality operators, big types implement a Cmp method that returns 1 when greater, -1 when less, or 0 when equal.

func (a Money) Cmp(b Money) int {
    if a.currency != b.currency {
        panic("currency mismatch")
    }
    if a.amount > b.amount {
        return 1
    } else if a.amount < b.amount {
        return -1
    } else {
        return 0
    }
}

The Cmp operator lets you perform standard comparisons against zero.

func main() {
    if a.Cmp(b) >= 0 {
        // a >= b
    }
    if a.Cmp(b) == 0 {
        // a == b
    }
    if a.Cmp(b) < 0 {
        
    }
}

There's something zen about a function that reduces comparison information to a point where you can use standard operators again.