Special Edition Using Java 2 Standard Edition

Special Operator Support for Strings

Before leaving the subject of operators, it is important to cover a special use of the addition operator as it relates to the String class discussed later in Chapter 8, "Using Strings and Text."

In general, Java, unlike C++, does not support operator overloading. There is one exception, however. Java does allow the concatenation of String objects using the + and += operators. The behavior of these operators with String objects is just what you would expect if you are familiar with C++. The String operands are concatenated to produce a new String that contains the values of both. In the following expression, the resulting string would be "Hello World":

"Hello" + " World"

If one of the operands used with ...