Though Alex indicated differently earlier, I intend to always use an "if" statment inside one constructor to initialise any class in the situation where the arguments may be different in number and type. I don't have the years of experience that Alex has, however, so I may end up regretting it but right now, it seems to me to be the clearest approach in this situation.
It varies, and often depends on the *promises* a class can make regarding a set of inputs. If you can get a similar effect from a bunch of different types of inputs, then putting the functionality all in one method is reasonable.
On the other hand, if there is a significant semantic difference associated with certain inputs, but you *can* do something useful with them, then a separate method may be called for.
The above applies to both ordinary methods and constructors. The builtins and the standard library offer many examples of both situations.
Cheers, Nick.
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Nick Coghlan | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Brisbane, Australia
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http://boredomandlaziness.skystorm.net
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