Groovy operators

Max suggested I post something about this, so...

Groovy has some operators that vanilla Java doesn't. Here's a quick reference:

<=> (Spaceship)
Example:
a <=> b is equivalent to a.compareTo(b)

?: (Elvis)
Example:
x ?: y is equivalent to x != null ? x : y

=~ (Find)
Example:
Matcher m = "abc" =~ /a/

==~ (Match)
Example:
assert "abc" ==~ /\w+/ Note this is a full match not a partial.

~ (Create pattern)
Example:
~/abc/ is equivalent to new Pattern(/abc/)

*. (Spread)
Example:
a*.b is equivalent to a.collect { it.b }

.& (Method reference)
Example:
Closure c = a.&b gives you a reference to the method "b()" on object "a" that you can pass around as a Closure.

.@ (Property access)
Example:
def c = a.@b gives you the value of the property "b" on object "a" directly (i.e. without going through the getter). This can be useful on horrible classes like java.awt.Dimension where the type of a public property is different to the return type of its getter. Most other uses of it are probably best avoided.

?. (Null-safe dereference)
Example:
a?.b is equivalent to a == null ? null : a.b

as (Type coercion)
Example:
new Date() as String is equivalent to new Date().toString() which is a trivial example but you can do quite exciting type conversions by overriding asType.

is (Object identity)
Example:
a is b is equivalent to a == b in Java.

kthxbye.