Overloading methods in C API

[Grant Edwards]

In article <Xns9307CD595EDCBrcamesz at amesz.demon.nl>, Robert Amesz wrote:
> Grant Edwards wrote:
> 
>>> Is method/function overloading common in Python modules?
>> 
>> No.  It's isn't supported.  The language does not allow it. 
>> Therefore, it is not common.
> 
> It's not that the language doesn't allow it, it's just that dynamic 
> typing makes it impossible to decide beforehand what methods/functions 
> would be called.

The language doesn't allow one to declare the types of function/method
parameters.  Therefore function/method overloading is not possible.  In my
mind, that can be summarized as "the language doesn't allow it."

>>> Is it looked down upon?
>> 
>> It is not allowed by the language design. I suppose that's a
>> pretty good indication that it's "looked down upon."
> 
> No, it's not "looked down upon". Take, for example, the % operator for 
> strings: it allows things like:

That's operator overloading, which I think of as different than
function/method overloading.

> 
>    "Single value: %d" % 43
> 
> or:
> 
>    "Multiple values: %s %d" % ("one", 2)
> 
> or even:
> 
>    "Using a dict: %(first)s %(second)d" % {"first": "one", "second": 2}
> 
> That's a pretty overloaded function, if you ask me, and it's part of 
> core Python. It's just that in Python you have to do this manually. Ah, 
> well, "explicit is better than implicit", to coin a phrase.

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. C++ has both.

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