Why polymorphism in c

It is achieved by using the same name for the same action. Operator overloading means defining additional tasks to operators without changing its actual meaning. We do this by using operator function. The purpose of operator overloading is to provide a special meaning to the user-defined data types.

In a Runtime polymorphism, functions are called at the time the program execution. Hence, it is known as late binding or dynamic binding.

Function overriding is a part of runtime polymorphism. In function overriding, more than one method has the same name with different types of the parameter list. It is achieved by using virtual functions and pointers. It provides slow execution as it is known at the run time. Thus, It is more flexible as all the things executed at the run time.

In function overriding, we give the new definition to base class function in the derived class. At that time, we can say the base function has been overridden. In function overriding, we have two definitions of the same function, one in the superclass and one in the derived class. The decision about which function definition requires calling happens at runtime.

A virtual function is declared by keyword virtual. The return type of virtual function may be int, float, void. A virtual function is a member function in the base class. You simply declare them in a class, just as if they were different methods that happened to have the same name.

Conclusion You can read my other article on inheritance explaining method overriding. Hope the article would have helped you in understanding polymorphism. Please feel free to contact me for feedback or comments you may have about this article. View All. Polymorphism in C. C Curator Updated date Feb 06, Compile time polymorphism is method and operators overloading. Runtime time polymorphism is done using inheritance and virtual functions. Use method overloading in situation where you want a class to be able to do something, but there is more than one possibility for what information is supplied to the method that carries out the task.

Compile time polymorphism early binding late binding Overloading Overriding. Next Recommended Reading. Windows 10 Vs Windows Visual Studio Vs Visual Studio Using function pointers you can create virtual tables and use it to create "objects" that will be treated uniformly, but behave differently at runtime. There's no intrinsic support for polymorphism in C, but there are design patterns, using function pointers, base 'class' structure casts, etc. The GTK library is good example.

I guess, you already checked Wikipedia article on polymorphism. In computer science, polymorphism is a programming language feature that allows values of different data types to be handled using a uniform interface. According to that definition, no, C doesn't natively support polymorphism. For instance, there is no general function for acquiring absolute value of a number abs and fabs are for integers and doubles respectively.

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