polymorphic

3 definitions found

polymorphic - Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 :

  Polymorphic \Pol`y*mor"phic\, a.
     Polymorphous.
     [1913 Webster]

polymorphic - WordNet (r) 2.1 (2005) :

  polymorphic
      adj 1: relating to the crystallization of a compound in two or
             more different forms; "polymorphous crystallization"
             [syn: polymorphous, polymorphic]
      2: relating to the occurrence of more than one kind of
         individual (independent of sexual differences) in an
         interbreeding population; "a polymorphic species" [syn:
         polymorphic, polymorphous]
      3: having or occurring in several distinct forms; "man is both
         polymorphic and polytypic"; "a polymorphous god" [syn:
         polymorphic, polymorphous]

polymorphic - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :

  polymorphism
  parametric polymorphism
  polymorphic
  
     <theory, programming> A concept first identified by
     Christopher Strachey (1967) and developed by Hindley and
     Milner, allowing types such as list of anything.  E.g. in
     Haskell:
  
     	length :: [a] -> Int
  
     is a function which operates on a list of objects of any type,
     a (a is a type variable).  This is known as parametric
     polymorphism.  Polymorphic typing allows strong type checking
     as well as generic functions.  ML in 1976 was the first
     language with polymorphic typing.
  
     Ad-hoc polymorphism (better described as overloading) is the
     ability to use the same syntax for objects of different types,
     e.g. "+" for addition of reals and integers or "-" for unary
     negation or diadic subtraction.  Parametric polymorphism
     allows the same object code for a function to handle arguments
     of many types but overloading only reuses syntax and requires
     different code to handle different types.
  
     See also generic type variable.
  
     In object-oriented programming, the term is used to describe
     a variable that may refer to objects whose class is not
     known at compile time and which respond at run time
     according to the actual class of the object to which they
     refer.
  
     (2002-08-08)