Understanding the Two Types of Overloading in Python
Overloaded Overloading
I explain why Python forbids method overloading while fully supporting operator overloading through magic methods like __add__. When you need multiple behaviors for a single method name, I show how to implement custom dispatching logic or use the @singledispatch decorator from the functools module to handle different argument types cleanly.
When we're talking about programming languages, Overloading refers to two different things, and Python does one of them, but not the other.
- reichstein
So the `+` is not _overloaded_, the `+` syntax is a shorthand for calling a method named `__add__` on the value of the first operand, with the value of the second operand as an argument . That is: `e1 + e2` is syntactic sugar for `e1.__add__(e2)`, no more and no less.
It's not "operator overloading" any more than two _different_ classes having a `length` property is "length overloading".
Using the term "operator overloading" to begin with is the error here.
- rf15
Good introduction to the space in Python (although a lot of languages have it, and just as many disallow it). I'm still on the fence regarding how useful or confusing it is. without (or even with) good variable names, "a + b" is an absolute mystery, especially when handling objects that come from classes you have no detailed internal understanding of.
- hnd9q09qk4
This aged well