Is method overloading not possible

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Method overloading in Objective-C?

Is method overloading not possible. I have two functions with the same name. When declared like the below i'm etting errors.

-(RS232Msg*)CreateMessage:(REMOTE_MESSAGE_ID) nMessageNumber;
-(RS232Msg*)CreateMessage:(const uint8_t*) szMessageName;

when declared -(RS232Msg*)CreateMessage:(const uint8_t*) szMessageName; i'm not getting any errors. I also have two functions as the same name with different return type and argument.But its working fine and there is no error in its declaration. Why is it so?

the type of parameter i'm passing is different.Why is the error. — spandana, Jun 07 '11 at 11:02
because method overloading is not supported :) The reason is that parameter types is not a part of method signature in objective-c. Only their names matter. — Vladimir, Jun 07 '11 at 11:06

Itai Ferber · Accepted Answer · 2011-06-07T19:19:43.740

3

No, method overloading is not possible in C, and therefore not possible in Objective-C (since Objective-C is a superset of C). If you'd like to use those two methods, you'll have to change their names. I would suggest the following:

- (RS232Msg *)createMessageWithMessageID:(REMOTE_MESSAGE_ID)nMessageNumber;
- (RS232Msg *)createMessageWithName:(const uint8_t*)szMessageName;

edited Jun 07 '11 at 19:19

answered Jun 07 '11 at 11:00

Itai Ferber

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That's not changing their type signatures, that's changing their names. That's the whole point - having different type signatures with the same name isn't supported. – Sherm Pendley Jun 07 '11 at 12:11
@Sherm Yeesh, sorry for the glaring mistake. You're right! Fixed. – Itai Ferber Jun 07 '11 at 19:20
No worries - it's a good answer despite that, and I don't give down votes for typos. :-) – Sherm Pendley Jun 07 '11 at 22:45

Is method overloading not possible

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