overloading

overloading

[¦ō·vər¦lōd·iŋ]

(computer science)

The use, in some advanced programming languages, of two or more variables or subroutines with the same name; the compiler determines by inference which entity is referred to each time the name occurs.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

overloading

(language)

(Or "Operator overloading"). Use of a single symbol to represent operators with different argument types, e.g. "-", used either, as a monadic operator to negate an expression, or as a dyadic operator to return the difference between two expressions. Another example is "+" used to add either integers or floating-point numbers. Overloading is also known as ad-hoc polymorphism.

User-defined operator overloading is provided by several modern programming languages, e.g. C++'s class system and the functional programming language Haskell's type classes.

This article is provided by FOLDOC - Free Online Dictionary of Computing (foldoc.org)

overloading

In programming, the ability to use the same variable for different data types. For example, the variable result could be initially filled (loaded) with a pointer and then with a string of data. See variable.

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