On 4/6/06, Aahz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I cringe every time I see the phrase "generic function". It's way too > generic -- it doesn't contain any hint of its meaning, and I find it > confusing because Python already has what I think of as generic > functions: > > def adder(a, b): > return a+b > > That's a perfectly good generic function that depends on Python's > duck-typing.
No, the term for this is polymorphism. I don't like "generic" either though, because e.g. in Java (and C++?) the term "generics" is associated with parameterized types a la Collection<String>. > "Multimethods" works, but Python is in many ways > function-oriented rather than method-oriented. It's also confusing because these things don't directly relate to the methods we already have. (There's a way to view it differently, of course, but it's not a simple transformation from a method to a multimethod.) > Why not call them "multifunctions"? What about overloaded functions, which is the term used in C++ and Java for a similar mechanism (that happens at compile-time -- but it's standard Python practice to move things to run-time). We could then also talk about overloaded methods when we're using the mechanism inside a class. Phillip Eby proposes "extensible"; but that's almost as meaningless as "generic"; it has so many meanings already. "Function overloading" is a pretty well-defined technical term with a narrow meaning that applies well to this concept. We already use the term overloading for operator overloading; I don't think it's going to cause confusion though; C++ has the same double use of the terminology. (As does Java, in the sense that it's commonly know that "Java does not have operator overloading." :-) I'll try to go with this for a while and see how it feels. -- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/) _______________________________________________ Python-3000 mailing list Python-3000@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-3000 Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-3000/archive%40mail-archive.com
