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.

overloading

(language)(Or "Operator overloading"). Use of a singlesymbol to represent operators with different argument types,e.g. "-", used either, as a monadic operator to negate anexpression, or as a dyadic operator to return the differencebetween two expressions. Another example is "+" used to addeither integers or floating-point numbers. Overloading isalso known as ad-hoc polymorphism.

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

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.