Chapter 20: Problem 9

Discuss the concept of polymorphism/operator overloading.

Short Answer

Expert verified

Polymorphism is a feature that allows one interface to control a general class of actions. Operator overloading permits the user to redefine the already existing operator's function.

Step by step solution

Defining Polymorphism

Polymorphism is a concept in object-oriented programming that allows objects of different types to be treated as objects of a parent type. It essentially allows one interface to control access to a general class of actions.

Example of Polymorphism

An example can be a parent class 'Animal' which has a method 'sound()'. Different objects like Cat, Dog etc are children of the parent class and they have different implementations for the 'sound()' method. For instance, Cat would print 'Meow' while dog would print 'Bark' on calling this method.

Defining Operator Overloading

Operator overloading is another crucial concept in object-oriented programming. It is the ability to redefine the meaning of an operator (like +, -, etc.) in context of a class. This effectively means that the operator symbol can represent a user-defined type specification, without changing its original meaning relative to the built-in types.

Example of Operator Overloading

Suppose we have a 'Vector' class. We can redefine '+' operator to perform vector addition and '==' operator to compare the vectors.

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Discuss the concept of polymorphism/operator overloading.

Short Answer

Step by step solution

Defining Polymorphism

Example of Polymorphism

Defining Operator Overloading

Example of Operator Overloading

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