From: paul@... (Paul J. Sanchez)
Date: 2002-09-13T06:00:59+09:00
Subject: Re: not grasping the method overloading/multi-dispatch thing

>>>>> "PT" == Phil Tomson <ptkwt@shell1.aracnet.com> writes:

    PT> In article <20020912151951.T25425@atdesk.com>,
    PT> Paul Brannan  <pbrannan@atdesk.com> wrote:
    >> On Fri, Sep 13, 2002 at 03:40:42AM +0900, Phil Tomson wrote:
    >>> Currently if we need a method that does two different things
    >>> based on the type of an argument we have to do:
    >>> 
    >>> def meth(s) case s when Integer #do something when Float #do
    >>> something else end end
    >>  This isn't necessary; see Hal's example of another alternative
    >> (declare a method in the Integer and Float classes that gets
    >> called from meth(), so that meth() follows the same code path
    >> for whatever type you use).

    PT> Good point.

    >> The downside is that you have to modify those classes in order
    >> for this to work.
    >> 

    PT> In Ruby it's not really considered a downside... it seems to
    PT> be an acceptable practice.

What happens when two programmers, working on different pieces of a
large project, add different methods with the same name to a base
class?

--paul