overloading a function

[Andy Gimblett]

On Fri, Mar 08, 2002 at 12:36:46AM +1100, Dave Harrison wrote:

> If I have a function, but I want to be able to call it two different
> ways - the ways being differentiated by the paramaters I pass the
> function) how do I do this ??

The pythonic way is to use default parameter values as follows:

def Foo(num, dflt=None):
    if dflt is None:
        # do whatever is appropriate
    else:
        # do whatever is appropriate

Then you can use either of the following:

Foo(5)
Foo(5, 'hello')

This is actually an FAQ: http://www.python.org/doc/FAQ.html#4.75

HTH,

Andy

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