Function overloading: Difference between revisions

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'''Method overloading''' is a feature found in various [[object oriented]] [[programming language]]s such as [[C Sharp (programming language)|C#]], [[C++]] and [[Java (programming language)|Java]] that allows the creation of several [[subprogram|function]]s with the same name which differ from each other in terms of the type of the input and the type of the output of the function.

An example of this would I don't think so be a [[Square (algebra)|square]] function which takes a number and returns the square of that number. In this case, it is often necessary to create different functions for [[Integer (computer science)|integer]] and [[floating point]] numbers.

Method overloading is usually associated with [[static typing|statically-typed]] programming languages which enforce [[type checking]] in [[function call]]s. When overloading a method, you are really just making a number of different methods that happen to have the same name. It is resolved at [[compile time]] which of these methods are used.