Clarification on : Overloading vs polymorphism

[Pho Tek]

Please confirm that polymorphism is a different beast from method overloading.
Thanks
Pho

[kyle amburn]

Hi Pho-
They are different.
Method overloading is when you have methods with the same name, but different paramater lists. Such as:
public void myTest(){}
public void myTest(int a){}
public int myTest (String s){return 1;}

Polymorphism is the ability of an object to be declared that of a super object type and maintain the methods in the actual type class.
i.e.
Object obj = new String("Hi");
obj.equals("Hi");//true because the equals method is used from the String class
Kyle

[Cindy Glass]

Once upon a time we had a lOOOOONG conversation about this in Cer Study. YOu might get something out of it.
http://www.javaranch.com/ubb/Forum24/HTML/009465.html

[Pho Tek]

Here's a simple polymorphism problem.
I want to create a method of this signature:
public void printType( Object o );
e.g.
Boolean b = new Boolean(true);
Someclass.printType( b ); // prints "Boolean"
boolean b2 = true;
Someclass.printType( b2 ); // prints "boolean"
The second invocation gives me a compile error:
printType(java.lang.Object) in Someclass cannot be applied to (boolean)
What am I missing ?
Thanks
Pho

[Bosun Bello]

>> boolean b2 = true;
You are trying to pass a primitive to a method that accepts an object. That's why you are getting a compile error. The first invocation is legal because "Boolean" is an object.

Bosun