Polymorphism

Categories: Glossary

A value is called polymorphic if, depending on the context where it's used, it can take on more than one type.

Various kinds of polymorphism are identified.

1. Parametric polymorphism; mostly found in functional languages
2. Inclusion polymorphism; mostly found in object oriented languages
3. Ad-hoc polymorphism; typically C++ overloading

1 Haskell Examples

foldr :: forall a b. (a -> b -> b) -> b -> [a] -> b

foldr is a typical example of a polymorphic function. When actually used, it may take on any of a variety of types, for example:

::(Char ->Int->Int)->Int->String->Int
::(String->String->String)->String->[String]->String

An "integer literal" is polymorphic:

1 :: forall t. (Num t) => t

2 References

• On Understanding Types, Data Abstraction, and Polymorphism (1985), by Luca Cardelli, Peter Wegner in ACM Computing Surveys.

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