Function overloading: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 17:08, 18 August 2024

Revision as of 07:07, 18 December 2024

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Two issues interact with and complicate function overloading: [[Name masking]] (due to [[Scope (computer science)|scope]]) and [[implicit type conversion]].

If a function is declared in one scope, and then another function with the same name is declared in an inner scope, there are two natural possible overloading behaviors: the inner declaration masks the outer declaration (regardless of signature), or both the inner declaration and the outer declaration are both included in the overload, with the inner declaration masking the outer declaration only if the signature matches. The first is taken in C++: "in C++, there is no overloading across scopes."<ref name=bjarne_faq>{{cite web |url=http://www.stroustrup.com/bs_faq2.html#overloadderived| title=Why doesn't overloading work for derived classes? |last=Stroustrup |first=Bjarne |author-link=Bjarne Stroustrup}}</ref> As a result, to obtain an overload set with functions declared in different scopes, one needs to explicitly import the functions from the outer scope into the inner scope, with the {{code|using}} keyword.

Implicit type conversion complicates function overloading because if the types of parameters do not exactly match the signature of one of the overloaded functions, but can match after type conversion, resolution depends on which type conversion is chosen.