Concept

Polymorphism (computer science)

Related concepts (30)

Graph Chatbot

Chat with Graph Search

Ask any question about EPFL courses, lectures, exercises, research, news, etc. or try the example questions below.

DISCLAIMER: The Graph Chatbot is not programmed to provide explicit or categorical answers to your questions. Rather, it transforms your questions into API requests that are distributed across the various IT services officially administered by EPFL. Its purpose is solely to collect and recommend relevant references to content that you can explore to help you answer your questions.

Type conversion

In computer science, type conversion, type casting, type coercion, and type juggling are different ways of changing an expression from one data type to another. An example would be the conversion of an integer value into a floating point value or its textual representation as a string, and vice versa. Type conversions can take advantage of certain features of type hierarchies or data representations.

ML (programming language)

ML (Meta Language) is a general-purpose functional programming language. It is known for its use of the polymorphic Hindley–Milner type system, which automatically assigns the types of most expressions without requiring explicit type annotations, and ensures type safety - there is a formal proof that a well-typed ML program does not cause runtime type errors. ML provides pattern matching for function arguments, garbage collection, imperative programming, call-by-value and currying.

Abstract data type

In computer science, an abstract data type (ADT) is a mathematical model for data types. An abstract data type is defined by its behavior (semantics) from the point of view of a user, of the data, specifically in terms of possible values, possible operations on data of this type, and the behavior of these operations. This mathematical model contrasts with data structures, which are concrete representations of data, and are the point of view of an implementer, not a user.

Late binding

In computing, late binding or dynamic linkage—though not an identical process to dynamically linking imported code libraries—is a computer programming mechanism in which the method being called upon an object, or the function being called with arguments, is looked up by name at runtime. In other words, a name is associated with a particular operation or object at runtime, rather than during compilation. The name dynamic binding is sometimes used, but is more commonly used to refer to dynamic scope.

Operator overloading

In computer programming, operator overloading, sometimes termed operator ad hoc polymorphism, is a specific case of polymorphism, where different operators have different implementations depending on their arguments. Operator overloading is generally defined by a programming language, a programmer, or both. Operator overloading is syntactic sugar, and is used because it allows programming using notation nearer to the target domain and allows user-defined types a similar level of syntactic support as types built into a language.

Simula

Simula is the name of two simulation programming languages, Simula I and Simula 67, developed in the 1960s at the Norwegian Computing Center in Oslo, by Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard. Syntactically, it is an approximate superset of ALGOL 60, and was also influenced by the design of Simscript. Simula 67 introduced objects, classes, inheritance and subclasses, virtual procedures, coroutines, and discrete event simulation, and featured garbage collection. Other forms of subtyping (besides inheriting subclasses) were introduced in Simula derivatives.

Object (computer science)

In computer science, an object can be a variable, a data structure, a function, or a method. As regions of memory, objects contain a value and are referenced by identifiers. In the object-oriented programming paradigm, an object can be a combination of variables, functions, and data structures; in particular in class-based variations of the paradigm, an object refers to a particular instance of a class. In the relational model of database management, an object can be a table or column, or an association between data and a database entity (such as relating a person's age to a specific person).

Method (computer programming)

A method in object-oriented programming (OOP) is a procedure associated with an object, and generally also a message. An object consists of state data and behavior; these compose an interface, which specifies how the object may be used. A method is a behavior of an object parametrized by a user. Data is represented as properties of the object, and behaviors are represented as methods. For example, a Window object could have methods such as open and close, while its state (whether it is open or closed at any given point in time) would be a property.

Type inference

Type inference refers to the automatic detection of the type of an expression in a formal language. These include programming languages and mathematical type systems, but also natural languages in some branches of computer science and linguistics. Types in a most general view can be associated to a designated use suggesting and restricting the activities possible for an object of that type. Many nouns in language specify such uses. For instance, the word leash indicates a different use than the word line.

Type class

In computer science, a type class is a type system construct that supports ad hoc polymorphism. This is achieved by adding constraints to type variables in parametrically polymorphic types. Such a constraint typically involves a type class T and a type variable a, and means that a can only be instantiated to a type whose members support the overloaded operations associated with T.