Overloading
This post explores the opportunites that Elijah gives you, the programmer, to overload or override functions. It also specifies where this behavior is not allowed.
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Table of Contents
🔗Overloading Operators
Overloading operators is done in the style of Python. You define a special function (dunder method) for the operator you wish to chnage. This is useful when you would like to improve the readability of your code for basic operations.
Overloaded operators can be defined in the class, in another class in reverse or in a namespace (usually the global or module ones).
The names of the dunder methods follow:
| Operator | Function Name |
|---|---|
+ | __add__ |
- | __sub__ |
* | __mul__ |
/ | __div__ |
< | __lt__ |
<= | __le__ |
> | __gt__ |
>= | __ge__ |
== | __eq__ |
!= | __ne__ |
This is not an exhaustive list.
🔗Overloading Functions
Overloading functions is a feature from C++ and Java (and distinctly not from Python and other dynamic languages) that says that you can have multiple functions with the same name that differ only in the number of arguments or just the type of arguments. This is useful when you want to do the same thing, but to different things, for example.
🔗Overloading Constructors
Overloading constructors is basically the same as overloading functions. You can have multiple constructors that differ only in the number of arguments or just the type of arguments.
🔗Not overloading (named) constructors
Named constructors cannot be overloaded. That is only one per name per class is allowed. Of course you can choose to inherit or redefine a named constructor from a base class.
🔗What's next?
The next post explains how ...