Description

Overriding and overloading Method overriding only occurs if the method signature is exactly the same. Let's take a look at the following classes: public class Bird { public void gulgate(Bird b) { ... } } public class Falcon { public void gulgate(Bird b) { ... } public void gulgate(Falcon f) { ... } } Here, Falcon::gulgate(Bird) overrides Bird::gulgate(Bird) since the method signatures are exactly the same. Falcon::gulgate(Falcon) is an example of method overloading, where the name of the function is the same but the argument that it takes in. Different return types If we had a method in Bird with the signature "public int gulgate(Falcon f)" (same signature as Falcon::gulgate(Falcon) but with a different return type), Java wouldn't allow this and would complain during compilation that the return types are not compatible (void from Falcon::gulgate(Falcon) and int from Bird::gulgate(Falcon)). Different access modifiers When the access modifiers are different, something slightly different will happen (I think this link describes it pretty well! Ctrl-F for "Overriding and Access-Modifiers") but don't worry about this too much since we haven't covered access modifiers in depth during lecture yet.

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