How would you overload the [] operator in javascript

You can do this with ES6 Proxy (available in all modern browsers)

var handler = {
    get: function(target, name) {
        return "Hello, " + name;
    }
};
var proxy = new Proxy({}, handler);

console.log(proxy.world); // output: Hello, world

Check details on MDN.

You can't overload operators in JavaScript.

It was proposed for ECMAScript 4 but rejected.

I don't think you'll see it anytime soon.

The simple answer is that JavaScript allows access to children of an Object via the square brackets.

So you could define your class:

MyClass = function(){
    // Set some defaults that belong to the class via dot syntax or array syntax.
    this.some_property = 'my value is a string';
    this['another_property'] = 'i am also a string';
    this[0] = 1;
};

You will then be able to access the members on any instances of your class with either syntax.

foo = new MyClass();
foo.some_property;  // Returns 'my value is a string'
foo['some_property'];  // Returns 'my value is a string'
foo.another_property;  // Returns  'i am also a string'
foo['another_property'];  // Also returns 'i am also a string'
foo.0;  // Syntax Error
foo[0];  // Returns 1
foo['0'];  // Returns 1

Use a proxy. It was mentioned elsewhere in the answers but I think that this is a better example:

var handler = {
    get: function(target, name) {
        if (name in target) {
            return target[name];
        }
        if (name == 'length') {
            return Infinity;
        }
        return name * name;
    }
};
var p = new Proxy({}, handler);

p[4]; //returns 16, which is the square of 4.