Overload (programming)

To overload a method in programming is to have two or more methods with the same name, but are distingished by the number and/or type of variables they require.

For example, doTask() and doTask(object O) are overloaded methods. To call the latter, an object must be passed as a parameter, whereas the former does not require a parameter, and is called with an empty parameter field. A common error would be to assign a default value to the object in the second method, this would result in an ambiguous call error, as the compiler wouldn't know wich of the two methods to use.

Another example would be a Print(object O) method. In this case we would like the method to be diferent when printing, for example, text and diferent for pictures. We write the two diferent methods as overloaded: Print(text_object T); Print(image_object P). If we write the overloaded print methods for all objects our program will "print", we never have to worry about the type of the object, and the correct function call again, the call is allways: Print(something).