polymorphism

<theory, programming>

The ability to leave parts of a type in a typed language unspecified. The term has three distinct uses:

* Parametric polymorphism refers to the use of type variables in a strongly typed language.

* Overloading, sometimes called ad-hoc polymorphism, means using the same syntax for different types.

* object-oriented polymorphism allows a variable to refer to objects whose class is not known at compile time.

Last updated: 2014-01-05

Nearby terms:

polymorphic lambda-calculus ♦ polymorphism ♦ polynomial ♦ polynomial-time

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