Overload === for equals()

[cchudant]

Can you overload a new operator === for equals() ?
I mean:
var1.equals(var2) -> var1 === var2
That world be great if that can be done!

[ghost]

just doing that is going to hurt if var1 is null, but it should also evaluate to true if both are null, so

(var1==var2 || (var1!=null && var1.equals(var2)))

[elect86]

If I may, I tried java-oo once looking for operator overloading... but when I discovere Kotlin, it was another different world...

I just accept that java is what it is.. and I spent so much time in workarounds for its limitations that I regret I didn't try earlier to look around for alternatives..

Give a try to Kotlin (100% java compatible), you won't regret
(Sorry for the ot!)

my 2 cents

[amelentev]

=== is a new lexeme for a Java Parser. But java-oo works only after parsing stage (yet), so adding completely new syntactic constructs will require much work.
I don't have time for this, but I'm open to contributions.
Probably it is possible to modify javac parser via javac 8 Plugin API[1]. But Eclipse and IntelliJ will require major hacks.
[1]: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/jdk/api/javac/tree/com/sun/source/util/Plugin.html

[Maaartinus]

Could something like ~== work? It's two legal tokens ~ and == in an illegal arrangement. It resembles ≅ (APPROXIMATELY EQUAL TO, U+2245), which is semantically fine as equals is a weaker relation than ==.