C++

Overloading a Function

ByWalter Wimberly February 23, 2020March 3, 2020

Overloading a function means that you can create different functions with the same name, as long as their signatures are different. That means that the parameter list must be of a different number and/or data types from one to another.

Overloading functions can make reading code much clearer/easier. This way functions that perform the same task all have the same name.

Note: A function cannot be overloaded based upon return type alone. It must have different parameters.

Note: Sometimes the compiler cannot tell which function it should call. This is called an ambiguous invocation, and will cause a compiler error. This often happens because C++ will try to covert numbers into a larger type if possible.

Below is an example of an overloaded function:

int add(int x, int y)
{
  return x + y;
}

int add(int x, int y, int z)
{
  return add(add(x, y), z);
}

double add(double x, double y)
{
  return x + y;
}

Overloading a Function was originally found on Access 2 Learn

Walter Wimberly

Assistant Professor

Walter Wimberly is an Assistant Professor at a regional college in Tennessee, teaching Computer Science in the Software Engineering track. He works as a student advisor, oversees curriculum changes, develops new courses, and manages the advisory panel.
Walter taught full time for about 7 years, before going back into “industry” as a full stack Software Developer for a dozen years. There he focused on web based projects coding in JavaScript/jQuery and utilizing the Bootstrap CSS Framework on the front-end, and coding in PHP, ASP/ASP.Net, SQL on the back-end.

Since he loves teaching, he taught as an adjunct web and digital media classes for eight (8) years, while working in industry, and has since returned to teaching full time.

He has been married for over 25 years, and is father to several special needs boys. As such, he is working on some projects to help others who have special needs to be self-sufficient, and support the care givers of those with special needs. Check out his Autism blog for more info.

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Python

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Python

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C++

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