Method Overloading

For example, a Student class might have three methods named resetGrades for resetting all the grades.The first method, which expects no arguments, resets each grade to 0.The second method, which expects a single integer argument, resets each grade to that integer.

The third method, which expects a list of integers as an argument, resets the grades to these integers at the corresponding positions in the list.

To accomplish this, a single method with a single optional parameter is defined.  When the method is called, the value of this parameter will be either 0 (no argument was given), an integer (whatever new grade to assign all the grades), or a list of integers.  If the type of the parameter is a list, the method uses an index to fetch the grade from the list.  Otherwise, the method uses the value directly.

def resetGrades(value = 0):
    for i in range(Student.NUM_GRADES):
        if type(value) == list:         
            self.grades[i] = value[i]
        else:
            self.grades[i] = value

Usage:

s = Student();
s.resetGrades(100)
s.resetGrades()
newGrades = [85, 66, 90, 100, 73]
s.resetGrades(newGrades)

For example, a Student class might have three methods named resetGrades for resetting all the grades.  All are distinct methods.

The first method, which expects no arguments, resets each grade to 0:

public void resetGrades(){
    resetGrades(0);
}

The second method, which expects a single integer argument, resets each grade to that integer.

public void resetGrades(int grade){
    for (int i = 0; i < Student.NUM_GRADES; i++)
        this.grades[i] = grade;
}

The third method, which expects an array of integers, resets the grades to these integers in the corresponding positions in the array.

public void resetGrades(int[] grades){
    for (int i = 0; i < Student.NUM_GRADES; i++)
        this.grades[i] = grades[i];
}

Usage:

Student s = new Student();
s.resetGrades(100);
s.resetGrades();
int[] newGrades = {85, 66, 90, 100, 73};
s.resetGrades(newGrades);