Hi --

On Fri, 13 Sep 2002, Phil Tomson wrote:

> I'm kind of torn between the two sides on this one...
>
> Currently if we need a method that does two different things based on
> the type of an argument we have to do:
>
>   def meth(s)
>     case s
>     when Integer
>       #do something
>     when Float
>       #do something else
>     end
>   end
>
> It _would_ be nice to be able to declare two meth methods as shown above
> instead of having to test the type of the argument.

I guess what I'm wondering is why the idea of Ruby as a language which
does things in ways other than testing-for-type seems to be falling
out of favor.  Just when it was getting exciting, at least for me....

> However, I also agree with David that this could change the nature of the
> language.  I also suspect that there will be a performance
> hit for all code even if you don't use method overloading.  IF it could be
> implemented in such as way as to not impact performance if you don't use
> the feature, then I'd probably lean towards doing it.

Once it's possible to sign methods by type, I seriously doubt that
very many newcomers to Ruby (at the very least) would write very many
methods where they didn't.  Hard to predict... but I still root for
the alternative.


David

-- 
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