There was a question last night after my talk regarding how JRuby handles Java methods called from Ruby that are overloaded. Here's an excerpt of what the JRuby book says:
*** Let’s say you’re attempting to call the foo method on class X. First, JRuby will use Java reflection to search for all public and protected methods named foo for X and its superclasses. Child classes’ methods override their parents’, just as in pure Java. Next, JRuby narrows down the list to just the methods that match the number of arguments you’re passing in, including methods with variable argument lists. When there’s more than one matching overload, JRuby looks for the best fit based on the passed-in parameters. Types that map directly between Ruby and Java get preferential treatment. For instance, Ruby Fixnums match Java integer types (both primitive and boxed), Ruby strings match Java strings, and so on. If no direct mappings exist, JRuby tries a looser fit by converting between different numeric types. For a Ruby Integer with no corresponding Java int or Integer argument, JRuby will look for a Java Numeric. As a last resort, JRuby looks for parameters that are Java interfaces and attempts to implement those interfaces on the fly. *** There you have it! Chris -- SD Ruby mailing list [email protected] http://groups.google.com/group/sdruby
