Operators

Operators can be used to form expressions. OCaml has more or less all the usual operators you would expect in a language from the C or Java family of languages. See the table of all operators in the OCaml manual for details.

Here are two things to watch out for as you begin:

• OCaml deliberately does not support operator overloading. As a consequence, the integer and floating-point operators are distinct. E.g., to add integers, use +. To add floating-point numbers, use +..

• There are two equality operators in OCaml, = and ==, with corresponding inequality operators <> and !=. Operators = and <> examine structural equality whereas == and != examine physical equality. Until we've studied the imperative features of OCaml, the difference between them will be tricky to explain. (See the documentation of Stdlib.(==) if you're curious now.) But what's important now is that you train yourself only to use = and not to use ==, which might be difficult if you're coming from a language like Java where == is the usual equality operator.