overloading

language (Or "Operator overloading"). Use of a single

symbol to represent operators with different argument types,

e.g. "-", used either, as a monadic operator to negate an

expression, or as a dyadic operator to return the difference

between two expressions. Another example is "+" used to add

either integers or floating-point numbers. Overloading is

also known as ad-hoc polymorphism.

User-defined operator overloading is provided by several

modern programming languages, e.g. C++'s class system and

the functional programming language Haskell's typeclasses.

(1995-04-30)