Flash cards
Review the key moves
What is the main idea behind Java Method Overloading?
Lesson checks
Practice each idea before moving on
Short Mimo-style checks built from this lesson's code, terms, and sequence.
Which statement best captures the main point of this lesson?
Complete the missing token from the example code.
___ myMethod(int x)Put the learning moves in the order that makes the concept easiest to apply.
Method Overloading
With method overloading , multiple methods can have the same name with different parameters:
Example
int myMethod(int x)
float myMethod(float x)
double myMethod(double x, double y)Consider the following example, which has two methods that add numbers of different type:
Example
static int plusMethodInt(int x, int y) {
return x + y;
}
static double plusMethodDouble(double x, double y) {
return x + y;
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
int myNum1 = plusMethodInt(8, 5);
double myNum2 = plusMethodDouble(4.3, 6.26);
System.out.println("int: " + myNum1);
System.out.println("double: " + myNum2);
}Instead of defining two methods that should do the same thing, it is better to overload one.
In the example below, we overload the plusMethod method to work for both int and double :
Example
static int plusMethod(int x, int y) {
return x + y;
}
static double plusMethod(double x, double y) {
return x + y;
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
int myNum1 = plusMethod(8, 5);
double myNum2 = plusMethod(4.3, 6.26);
System.out.println("int: " + myNum1);
System.out.println("double: " + myNum2);
}Note
Multiple methods can have the same name as long as the number and/or type of parameters are different.