Spaceship

In this post, I conclude my miniseries to the three-way comparison operator with a few subtle details. The subtle details include the compiler-generated the == and != operators and the interplay of classical comparison operators and the three-way comparison operator.

The compiler performs quite a clever job when it generates all six comparison operators. In the end, you get the intuitive and efficient comparison operators for free. Let me dive with this post into the details of the spaceship operator.

The three-way comparison operator <=> is often just called spaceship operator. The spaceship operator determines for two values A  and B whether A < B, A = B, or A > B. You can define the spaceship operator or the compiler can auto-generate it for you.