From: Pat Maddox <pergesu@...>
Date: 2006-12-04T12:50:45+09:00
Subject: Re: method overloading like Java?

On 12/3/06, Gordon Thiesfeld <gthiesfeld@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Is there a way to do this in Ruby?  I am aware of method(*args) and
> > case...when but I think Java's version is cleaner and more readable.  I
> > also know that variables in Ruby are dynamically typed, the method that
> > is called should be based on the most recent type of the variable being
> > passed.
>
> What about this?
>
> class String
>   def foo
>     puts 'String'
>   end
> end
>
> class Numeric
>   def foo
>     puts 'Numeric'
>   end
> end
>
> x1 = 1
> x2 = 'string'
>
> x1.foo
> x2.foo

EXACTLY

If you want different types of objects to perform different behavior
for the same method call, you use polymorphism.  What OP wants to do
is essentially a design pattern for providing polymorphism
capabilities to a language that doesn't have them built in.

Pat