"Chris Yocum" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Hi All, > At the risk of sounding a bit thick, I have a couple of questions > about Perl6's multi keyword and mutilmethod in general. This seems > like overloaded functions from C++ so why do we need a key word to > declare them rather than using something like C++'s name mangling? Is > there something that I am just missing here?
Because of your question I had a look at Synopsis 6 (http://dev.perl.org/perl6/doc/design/syn/S06.html). I should do this more often. Maybe you should also have a look. It's always refreshing. At least the many keywords seem to be necessary to map the complexity of different paradigms possible in Perl6. Multimethods are not just overloading as in C++. Second, the different keywords declare different behaviour you can choose. Just read S06, it's explained quite understandable. > can we now write generic/overloaded functions in Perl6 without OO or > have I conflated OO with overloading incorrectly? However it's currently called, with multimethods you can elegantly "divide and conquer" your code into different subs instead of ugly "parameter checking if-cascades". multi sub talk () { say 'Loose Talk Is Noose Talk.'; } multi sub talk (String $msg) { say $msg; } multi sub talk (String $msg, Int $times) { say $msg x $times; } talk("Hi", 10); talk("Hello"); talk; GreetinX Steffen -- Steffen Schwigon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Dresden Perl Mongers <http://dresden-pm.org/>
