From: "trans.  (T. Onoma)" <transami@...>
Date: 2004-10-05T00:19:03+09:00
Subject: Re: Too Many Ways?

On Monday 04 October 2004 10:55 am, David A. Black wrote:
> I have to admit (and my lack of C++, Java, etc. is probably showing
> through here -- i.e., I'm perfectly willing to believe there's
> something fundamental I'm just missing), I have never understood the
> idea of differentiating methods by number of arguments.  To me it's
> sort of like differentiating them based on what letters the argument
> names begin with.  What if two slightly different forms of the method
> both, by chance, took three arguments?  Would one add a dummy
> argument?  The whole thing has always seemed to me like a
> gimmick/workaround for languages with design problems.
>
> (Again, all based on gut reaction and probably not enough
> education....)

My use case is this. I wrote an event-based AOP interface on top of 
set_trace_func. To define advice, one defines "hook" methods. Now, I could 
force the user to always define those methods with the full array of 
arguments:

  def my_advice(target, binding, back_binding)

Or I can allow them to use none, the first, the first and second, or all 
three, as they require. i.e.

  def my_advice
  def my_advice(target)
  def my_advice(target, binding)
  def my_advice(target, binding, back_binding)

I choose to allow the user this flexibility.  Thank goodness there are only 
three!

T.