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In some programming languages, function overloading or method overloading is the ability to create multiple functions of the same name with different implementations. Calls to an overloaded function will run a specific implementation of that function appropriate to the context of the call, allowing one function call to perform different tasks ...
Multiple dispatch or multimethods is a feature of some programming languages in which a function or method can be dynamically dispatched based on the run-time (dynamic) type or, in the more general case, some other attribute of more than one of its arguments. [1]
In the Java virtual machine, internal type signatures are used to identify methods and classes at the level of the virtual machine code.. Example: The method String String. substring (int, int) is represented in bytecode as Ljava / lang / String. substring (II) Ljava / lang / String;.
The previous section notwithstanding, there are other ways in which ad hoc polymorphism can work out. Consider for example the Smalltalk language. In Smalltalk, the overloading is done at run time, as the methods ("function implementation") for each overloaded message ("overloaded function") are resolved when they are about to be executed.
C++ does not have the keyword super that a subclass can use in Java to invoke the superclass version of a method that it wants to override. Instead, the name of the parent or base class is used followed by the scope resolution operator. For example, the following code presents two classes, the base class Rectangle, and the derived class Box.
The problem is that, while virtual functions are dispatched dynamically in C++, function overloading is done statically. The problem described above can be resolved by simulating double dispatch, for example by using a visitor pattern. Suppose the existing code is extended so that both SpaceShip and ApolloSpacecraft are given the function
Intersection types are useful for describing overloaded functions. [2] For example, if number => number is the type of function taking a number as an argument and returning a number, and string => string is the type of function taking a string as an argument and returning a string, then the intersection of these two types can be used to ...
late binding, because virtual function calls are not bound until the time of invocation; single dispatch (i.e., single-argument polymorphism), because virtual function calls are bound simply by looking through the vtable provided by the first argument (the this object), so the runtime types of the other arguments are completely irrelevant.