If you are not dispatching on the type, why not allow the parameter to be duck typed? sometimes union typealiases can be helpful
typealias StringOrSymbol Union(String, Symbol) test(x::StringOrSymbol) = symbol(x) On Tuesday, February 11, 2014 10:44:56 PM UTC-5, Fil Mackay wrote: > > Thanks for the reply Kevin. > > Unfortunately this is a routine pattern that I'm hitting, I was hoping for > a more general solution than adding a lot of extra overloads.. > > > On Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 10:36 AM, Kevin Squire > <[email protected]<javascript:> > > wrote: > >> Hi Fil, >> >> The way to do that in Julia is simply to define another version of the >> function, which does the conversion and passes that on to the "main" >> version of the function: >> >> test(str::String) = test(symbol(str)) >> >> Cheers, >> Kevin >> >> >> On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 3:30 PM, Fil Mackay >> <[email protected]<javascript:> >> > wrote: >> >>> Just wondering if there is an operator to easily perform known >>> conversion. Say I have a function that takes a Symbol, and I want it to >>> accept a String as well: >>> >>> function test(s::Symbol) >>> end >>> >>> What I want to do is say, "yes I know this is not a Symbol - so please >>> convert() it" >>> >>> mystr = "foo" >>> test(mystr::Symbol) >>> >>> This would translate to: >>> >>> mystr = "foo" >>> test(convert(Symbol, mystr)) >>> >>> Is there any such operator? I would have thought doing this with the >>> current type assert would make sense? >>> >>> Regards, Fil. >>> >>> >> >
