Java Method Overloading

Method Overloading

With method overloading, multiple methods can have the same name with different parameters:

Example

int myMethod(int x)
float myMethod(float x)
double myMethod(double x, double y)

Consider the following example, which has two methods that add numbers of different type:

Example

static int plusMethodInt(int x, int y) {
  return x + y;
}

static double plusMethodDouble(double x, double y) {
  return x + y;
}

public static void main(String[] args) {
  int myNum1 = plusMethodInt(8, 5);
  double myNum2 = plusMethodDouble(4.3, 6.26);
  System.out.println("int: " + myNum1);
  System.out.println("double: " + myNum2);
}

Instead of defining two methods that should do the same thing, it is better to overload one.

In the example below, we overload the plusMethod method to work for both int and double:

Example

static int plusMethod(int x, int y) {
  return x + y;
}

static double plusMethod(double x, double y) {
  return x + y;
}

public static void main(String[] args) {
  int myNum1 = plusMethod(8, 5);
  double myNum2 = plusMethod(4.3, 6.26);
  System.out.println("int: " + myNum1);
  System.out.println("double: " + myNum2);
}

Note: Multiple methods can have the same name as long as the number and/or type of parameters are different.