Overloading methods in C API

[Grant Edwards]

In article <mailman.1042934674.24272.python-list at python.org>, Grzegorz Adam Hankiewicz wrote:
>> >> For whatever historical reasons, operator overloading and
>> >> function/method overloading are usually considered as two
>> >> separate language features.  C and python have the former but
>> >> not the latter.
>> > 
>> > *cough* C has neither.
>> 
>> Nonsense.  The operators + - * / do different things depending on
>> the types of their operands.  That's operator overloading.
> 
> Maybe you are refering to C's usually warningless type coercion in
> mathematical operations? Or you know of a way to add two strings
> and have them concatenated? Please ellaborate.

Those operators don't happen to work on strings.  That's neither here nor
there. 

The "+" operator can mean several things:

 integer addition
 pointer addition
 floating point addition
 unary postive
 
The "-" can mean several different "subtraction" operations (integer, fp,
pointer) and can also be unary negation.

The "*" operator does two different multiplaction operations (integer, fp)
as well as de-referenecing pointers.

Back when I studied language design, that was called "operator overloading".

Perhaps the definition has changed since then -- it was 15 years ago.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  HAIR TONICS, please!!
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