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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 ...
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]
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
And even if methods owned by the base class call the virtual method, they will instead be calling the derived method. Overloading occurs when two or more methods in one class have the same method name but different parameters. Overriding means having two methods with the same method name and parameters. Overloading is also referred to as ...
The data from these papers is summarized in the following table, where the dispatch ratio DR is the average number of methods per generic function; the choice ratio CR is the mean of the square of the number of methods (to better measure the frequency of functions with a large number of methods); [2] [3] and the degree of specialization DoS is ...
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.
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.
Often the compiler selects the overload to call based on the type of the input arguments or it fails if the input arguments do not select an overload. Older and weakly-typed languages generally do not support overloading. Here is an example of overloading in C++, two functions Area that accept different types: