Is operator overloading possible in PHP?

No, PHP does not have a built-in operator overloading mechanism in the sense implemented in languages like C++ or Python, where you can define custom behavior for standard operators (+, -, *, /, etc.) for user-defined data types.

However, PHP provides magic methods that allow emulating the behavior of some operators for objects.

The most common magic methods related to operations:

• __toString(): Called when attempting to convert an object to a string (e.g., when using echo or concatenation).
• __invoke(): Called when attempting to invoke an object as a function.
• __get(), __set(), __isset(), __unset(): Emulate access to object properties as if they were array elements.

<?php

class MyString
{
    private string $value;

    public function __construct(string $value)
    {
        $this->value = $value;
    }

    // Emulate concatenation operator and echo
    public function __toString(): string
    {
        return $this->value;
    }
}

$myString = new MyString("Hello, ");
$anotherString = "World!";

// __toString() is called automatically here
echo $myString . $anotherString; // Outputs "Hello, World!"

Although this is not full operator overloading, these magic methods allow creating classes with more intuitive syntax and behavior in certain contexts.