Method overloading is an OOPS concept which provides ability to have several methods having the same name with in the class where the methods differ in types or number of arguments passed.
Method overloading in Python
Method overloading in its traditional sense (as defined above) as exists in other languages like method overloading in Java doesn’t exist in Python.
In Python if you try to overload a function by having two or more functions having the same name but different number of arguments only the last defined function is recognized, calling any other overloaded function results in an error.
For example in the given class there are two methods having the name sum but number of parameters differ.
class OverloadDemo:
# first sum method, two parameters
def sum(self, a, b):
s = a + b
print(s)
# overloaded sum method, three parameters
def sum(self, a, b, c):
s = a + b + c
print(s)
od = OverloadDemo()
od.sum(7, 8)
Output
File "F:/NETJS/NetJS_2017/Python/Test/OverloadDemo.py", line 10, in <module>
od.sum(7, 8)
TypeError: sum() missing 1 required positional argument: 'c'
As you can here when calling the method with two parameters an error is thrown as this sum() method is not the latest.
If you call the method having three parameters code runs fine.
class OverloadDemo:
# first sum method, two parameters
def sum(self, a, b):
s = a + b
print(s)
# overloaded sum method, three parameters
def sum(self, a, b, c):
s = a + b + c
print(s)
od = OverloadDemo()
od.sum(7, 8, 9)
Output
24 Process finished with exit code 0
Achieving method overloading in Python
Since using the same method name again to overload the method is not possible in Python, so achieving method overloading in Python is done by having a single method with several parameters. Then you need to check the actual number of arguments passed to the method and perform the operation accordingly.
For example if we take the same method sum() as used above with the capability to pass two or three parameters, in Python this method overloading can be done as shown in the below example.
class OverloadDemo:
# sum method with default as None for parameters
def sum(self, a=None, b=None, c=None):
# When three params are passed
if a!=None and b!=None and c!=None:
s = a + b + c
print('Sum = ', s)
# When two params are passed
elif a!=None and b!=None:
s = a + b
print('Sum = ', s)
od = OverloadDemo()
od.sum(7, 8)
od.sum(7, 8, 9)
Output
Sum = 15 Sum = 24 Process finished with exit code 0
That's all for this topic Method Overloading in Python. If you have any doubt or any suggestions to make please drop a comment. Thanks!
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