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De - Pt| English Dictionary: polymorphism | by the DICT Development Group |
| 3 results for polymorphism | |
| From WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006) [wn]: | |
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| From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]: | |
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Polymorphism \Pol`y*mor"phism\, n. 1. (Crystallog.) Same as {Pleomorphism}. 2. (Biol.) (a) The capability of assuming different forms; the capability of widely varying in form. (b) Existence in many forms; the coexistence, in the same locality, of two or more distinct forms independent of sex, not connected by intermediate gradations, but produced from common parents. | |
| From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (15Feb98) [foldoc]: | |
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polymorphism {Christopher Strachey} (1967) and developed by Hindley and Milner, allowing {types} such as list of anything. E.g. in {Haskell}: length :: [a] -> Int is a function which operates on a list of objects of any type, a (a is a {type variable}). This is known as parametric polymorphism. Polymorphic typing allows strong type checking as well as generic functions. {ML} in 1976 was the first language with polymorphic typing. Ad-hoc polymorphism (better described as {overloading}) is the ability to use the same syntax for objects of different types, e.g. "+" for addition of reals and integers or "-" for unary negation or diadic subtraction. Parametric polymorphism allows the same object code for a function to handle arguments of many types but overloading only reuses syntax and requires different code to handle different types. See also {generic type variable}. In {object-oriented programming}, the term is used to describe a {variable} that may refer to objects whose {class} is not known at {compile time} and which respond at {run time} according to the actual class of the object to which they refer. (2002-08-08) | |
