Java Object

Sometimes you will have a java base class that has a method that’s been overloaded several times. It is important for the programmer to remember that redefining the method name in the derived class does not hide any of the base-class versions. Therefore you should keep in mind that overloading works irrespective of whether the method has been defined at this level or in a base class:

Java Code:

import static com.acme.examples.Print.*;

public class Mother {
	char foo(char c) {
		print("foo(char)"); 
		return 98; // character b
		} 
	
	float foo(float f) {
		print("foo(float)"); 
		return 1.0f;
		}
}

import static com.acme.examples.Print.*;

public class Daughter extends Mother {
	
	void foo(OurHouse m) {
	print("foo(OurHouse)");
	}
}

public class OurHouse {

}


public class Hide {
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		Daughter d = new Daughter(); 
		d.foo(1); 
		d.foo('x'); 
		d.foo(1.0f);
		d.foo(new OurHouse());
	}
}

You can see that all the overloaded methods of Mother are available in Daughter, even though Daughter has a new overloaded method. It’s very common to override methods with the same name, the same signature and returning the same type as in the base class. Since java 5 has added the @Override annotation, which is not a keyword but can be used as though it was. So now when you want to override a method, you can add this annotation and the compiler will produce an error message if you overload instead of overriding.