Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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 ...
Method overloading, on the other hand, refers to differentiating the code used to handle a message based on the parameters of the method. If one views the receiving object as the first parameter in any method then overriding is just a special case of overloading where the selection is based only on the first argument.
Ad hoc polymorphism was a feature of ALGOL 68, while parametric polymorphism was the core feature of ML's type system. In a 1985 paper, Peter Wegner and Luca Cardelli introduced the term inclusion polymorphism to model subtypes and inheritance , [ 1 ] citing Simula as the first programming language to implement it.
Method overriding, in object-oriented programming, is a language feature that allows a subclass or child class to provide a specific implementation of a method that is already provided by one of its superclasses or parent classes.
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.
A couple of mainstream languages, Eiffel and Dart [9] allow the parameters of an overriding method to have a more specific type than the method in the superclass (parameter type covariance). Thus, the following Dart code would type check, with putAnimal overriding the method in the base class:
Get AOL Mail for FREE! Manage your email like never before with travel, photo & document views. Personalize your inbox with themes & tabs. You've Got Mail!
In computer science, dynamic dispatch is the process of selecting which implementation of a polymorphic operation (method or function) to call at run time.It is commonly employed in, and considered a prime characteristic of, object-oriented programming (OOP) languages and systems.