Lecture

Object-Oriented Programming: Polymorphism

Graph Chat

Chat with Graph Search

Ask any question about EPFL courses, lectures, exercises, research, news, etc. or try the example questions below.

DISCLAIMER: The Graph Chatbot is not programmed to provide explicit or categorical answers to your questions. Rather, it transforms your questions into API requests that are distributed across the various IT services officially administered by EPFL. Its purpose is solely to collect and recommend relevant references to content that you can explore to help you answer your questions.

Description

This lecture introduces the concept of polymorphism in object-oriented programming, focusing on heterogeneous collections, pure virtual methods, abstract classes, and the implementation of polymorphic treatments. The instructor explains the use of virtual methods, override, and the subtyping relation. Through a case study, students learn about the implementation of polymorphism in C++, including the creation of abstract classes and the design of polymorphic treatments. The lecture also covers the application of polymorphism in a hotel reservation system, where different types of services are modeled using polymorphic behavior.

Official source

Ontological neighbourhood

Theoretical computer science

Programming language theory: High-level programming languages

Related concepts (32)

Inheritance (object-oriented programming)

In object-oriented programming, inheritance is the mechanism of basing an object or class upon another object (prototype-based inheritance) or class (class-based inheritance), retaining similar implementation. Also defined as deriving new classes (sub classes) from existing ones such as super class or base class and then forming them into a hierarchy of classes. In most class-based object-oriented languages like C++, an object created through inheritance, a "child object", acquires all the properties and behaviors of the "parent object", with the exception of: constructors, destructors, overloaded operators and friend functions of the base class.

Polymorphism (computer science)

In programming language theory and type theory, polymorphism is the provision of a single interface to entities of different types or the use of a single symbol to represent multiple different types. The concept is borrowed from a principle in biology where an organism or species can have many different forms or stages. The most commonly recognized major classes of polymorphism are: Ad hoc polymorphism: defines a common interface for an arbitrary set of individually specified types.

Object-oriented programming

Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of "objects", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or properties), and the code is in the form of procedures (often known as methods). A common feature of objects is that procedures (or methods) are attached to them and can access and modify the object's data fields. In this brand of OOP, there is usually a special name such as or used to refer to the current object.

Subtyping

In programming language theory, subtyping (also subtype polymorphism or inclusion polymorphism) is a form of type polymorphism in which a subtype is a datatype that is related to another datatype (the supertype) by some notion of substitutability, meaning that program elements, typically subroutines or functions, written to operate on elements of the supertype can also operate on elements of the subtype. If S is a subtype of T, the subtyping relation (written as S

Interface (object-oriented programming)

In object-oriented programming, an interface or protocol type is a data type that acts as an abstraction of a class. It describes a set of method signatures, the implementations of which may be provided by multiple classes that are otherwise not necessarily related to each other. A class which provides the methods listed in a protocol is said to adopt the protocol, or to implement the interface. If objects are fully encapsulated then the protocol is the only way in which they may be accessed by other objects.

Related lectures (64)

Inheritance: Polymorphism & Casting

Covers inheritance, polymorphism, and casting in object-oriented programming, emphasizing code factorization and generic object manipulation.

Operator Overloading in C++

Explores operator overloading in C++, emphasizing internal and external overloads and their application to complex numbers.

Object-Oriented Programming: Polymorphism and Pointers

Explores object-oriented programming concepts like polymorphism and pointers in C++.

Polymorphic Display in Java

Covers polymorphic display, default behavior, and abstract products in Java.

Abstract Data Structures in C++