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In class-based programming, downcasting, or type refinement, is the act of casting a base or parent class reference, to a more restricted derived class reference. [1] This is only allowable if the object is already an instance of the derived class, and so this conversion is inherently fallible.
The curiously recurring template pattern (CRTP) is an idiom, originally in C++, in which a class X derives from a class template instantiation using X itself as a template argument. [1] More generally it is known as F-bound polymorphism, and it is a form of F-bounded quantification.
The problem is that more than one degree of polymorphism exist: one for dispatching the display_on method to an object and another for selecting the right code (or method) for displaying. A much cleaner and more maintainable solution is then to do a second dispatch, this time for selecting the right method for displaying the object on the medium:
There are methods that a subclass cannot override. For example, in Java, a method that is declared final in the super class cannot be overridden. Methods that are declared private or static cannot be overridden either because they are implicitly final. It is also impossible for a class that is declared final to become a super class. [9]
Polymorphism is the phenomenon wherein somewhat interchangeable objects each expose an operation of the same name but possibly differing in behavior. As an example, a File object and a Database object both have a StoreRecord method that can be used to write a personnel record to storage. Their implementations differ.
Roberts (p. 171) gives a related example in Java, using a Class to represent a stack frame. The example given is a solution to the Tower of Hanoi problem wherein a stack simulates polymorphic recursion with a beginning, temporary and ending nested stack substitution structure. [5]
Polymorphism can be distinguished by when the implementation is selected: statically (at compile time) or dynamically (at run time, typically via a virtual function). This is known respectively as static dispatch and dynamic dispatch, and the corresponding forms of polymorphism are accordingly called static polymorphism and dynamic polymorphism.
For example, the Document Object Model (DOM) is a collection of objects that represent a page in a web browser, used by script programs to examine and dynamically change the page. There is a Microsoft Excel object model [1] for controlling Microsoft Excel from another program, and the ASCOM Telescope Driver is an object model for controlling an ...