polytypic function
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programming language theory Programming language theory (PLT) is a branch of computer science that deals with the design, implementation, analysis, characterization, and classification of formal languages known as programming languages. Programming language theory is clos ...
and type theory, polymorphism is the provision of a single interface to entities of different
type Type may refer to: Science and technology Computing * Typing, producing text via a keyboard, typewriter, etc. * Data type, collection of values used for computations. * File type * TYPE (DOS command), a command to display contents of a file. * Ty ...
s or the use of a single symbol to represent multiple different types.: "Polymorphic types are types whose operations are applicable to values of more than one type." 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. * '' Parametric polymorphism'': not specifying concrete types and instead use abstract symbols that can substitute for any type. * '' Subtyping'' (also called ''subtype polymorphism'' or ''inclusion polymorphism''): when a name denotes instances of many different classes related by some common superclass.


History

Interest in polymorphic type systems developed significantly in the 1960s, with practical implementations beginning to appear by the end of the decade. ''Ad hoc polymorphism'' and ''parametric polymorphism'' were originally described in
Christopher Strachey Christopher S. Strachey (; 16 November 1916 – 18 May 1975) was a British computer scientist. He was one of the founders of denotational semantics, and a pioneer in programming language design and computer time-sharing.F. J. Corbató, et al., ...
's ''
Fundamental Concepts in Programming Languages ''Fundamental Concepts in Programming Languages'' were an influential set of lecture notes written by Christopher Strachey for the International Summer School in Computer Programming at Copenhagen in August, 1967. It introduced much programming l ...
'', where they are listed as "the two main classes" of polymorphism. Ad hoc polymorphism was a feature of Algol 68, while parametric polymorphism was the core feature of ML's type system. In a 1985 paper, Peter Wegner and Luca Cardelli introduced the term ''inclusion polymorphism'' to model subtypes and inheritance, citing
Simula Simula is the name of two simulation programming languages, Simula I and Simula 67, developed in the 1960s at the Norwegian Computing Center in Oslo, by Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard. Syntactically, it is an approximate superset of ALGOL 6 ...
as the first programming language to implement it.


Types


Ad hoc polymorphism

Christopher Strachey Christopher S. Strachey (; 16 November 1916 – 18 May 1975) was a British computer scientist. He was one of the founders of denotational semantics, and a pioneer in programming language design and computer time-sharing.F. J. Corbató, et al., ...
chose the term ''ad hoc polymorphism'' to refer to polymorphic functions that can be applied to arguments of different types, but that behave differently depending on the type of the argument to which they are applied (also known as function overloading or operator overloading). The term " ad hoc" in this context is not intended to be pejorative; it refers simply to the fact that this type of polymorphism is not a fundamental feature of the type system. In the
Pascal Pascal, Pascal's or PASCAL may refer to: People and fictional characters * Pascal (given name), including a list of people with the name * Pascal (surname), including a list of people and fictional characters with the name ** Blaise Pascal, Fren ...
/
Delphi Delphi (; ), in legend previously called Pytho (Πυθώ), in ancient times was a sacred precinct that served as the seat of Pythia, the major oracle who was consulted about important decisions throughout the ancient classical world. The oracle ...
example below, the Add functions seem to work generically over various types when looking at the invocations, but are considered to be two entirely distinct functions by the compiler for all intents and purposes: program Adhoc; function Add(x, y : Integer) : Integer; begin Add := x + y end; function Add(s, t : String) : String; begin Add := Concat(s, t) end; begin Writeln(Add(1, 2)); (* Prints "3" *) Writeln(Add('Hello, ', 'Mammals!')); (* Prints "Hello, Mammals!" *) end. In dynamically typed languages the situation can be more complex as the correct function that needs to be invoked might only be determinable at run time. Implicit type conversion has also been defined as a form of polymorphism, referred to as "coercion polymorphism".


Parametric polymorphism

''Parametric polymorphism'' allows a function or a data type to be written generically, so that it can handle values ''uniformly'' without depending on their type. Parametric polymorphism is a way to make a language more expressive while still maintaining full static type-safety. The concept of parametric polymorphism applies to both
data type In computer science and computer programming, a data type (or simply type) is a set of possible values and a set of allowed operations on it. A data type tells the compiler or interpreter how the programmer intends to use the data. Most progra ...
s and functions. A function that can evaluate to or be applied to values of different types is known as a ''polymorphic function.'' A data type that can appear to be of a generalized type (e.g. a list with elements of arbitrary type) is designated ''polymorphic data type'' like the generalized type from which such specializations are made. Parametric polymorphism is ubiquitous in functional programming, where it is often simply referred to as "polymorphism". The following example in Haskell shows a parameterized list data type and two parametrically polymorphic functions on them: data List a = Nil , Cons a (List a) length :: List a -> Integer length Nil = 0 length (Cons x xs) = 1 + length xs map :: (a -> b) -> List a -> List b map f Nil = Nil map f (Cons x xs) = Cons (f x) (map f xs) Parametric polymorphism is also available in several object-oriented languages. For instance, templates in C++ and D, or under the name
generics Generic or generics may refer to: In business * Generic term, a common name used for a range or class of similar things not protected by trademark * Generic brand, a brand for a product that does not have an associated brand or trademark, other ...
in C#, Delphi, Java and Go: class List List map(Func f, List xs)
John C. Reynolds John Charles Reynolds (June 1, 1935 – April 28, 2013) was an American computer scientist. Education and affiliations John Reynolds studied at Purdue University and then earned a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in theoretical physics from Harvard U ...
(and later Jean-Yves Girard) formally developed this notion of polymorphism as an extension to lambda calculus (called the polymorphic lambda calculus or System F). Any parametrically polymorphic function is necessarily restricted in what it can do, working on the shape of the data instead of its value, leading to the concept of parametricity.


Subtyping

Some languages employ the idea of ''subtyping'' (also called ''subtype polymorphism'' or ''inclusion polymorphism'') to restrict the range of types that can be used in a particular case of polymorphism. In these languages, subtyping allows a function to be written to take an object of a certain type ''T'', but also work correctly, if passed an object that belongs to a type ''S'' that is a subtype of ''T'' (according to the
Liskov substitution principle The Liskov substitution principle (LSP) is a particular definition of a subtyping relation, called strong behavioral subtyping, that was initially introduced by Barbara Liskov in a 1988 conference keynote address titled ''Data abstraction and h ...
). This type relation is sometimes written ''S'' <: ''T''. Conversely, ''T'' is said to be a ''supertype'' of ''S''—written ''T'' :> ''S''. Subtype polymorphism is usually resolved dynamically (see below). In the following Java example we make cats and dogs subtypes of animals. The procedure letsHear() accepts an animal, but will also work correctly if a subtype is passed to it: abstract class Animal class Cat extends Animal class Dog extends Animal static void letsHear(final Animal a) static void main(String[] args) In another example, if ''Number'', ''Rational'', and ''Integer'' are types such that ''Number'' :> ''Rational'' and ''Number'' :> ''Integer'', a function written to take a ''Number'' will work equally well when passed an ''Integer'' or ''Rational'' as when passed a ''Number''. The actual type of the object can be hidden from clients into a black box, and accessed via object
identity Identity may refer to: * Identity document * Identity (philosophy) * Identity (social science) * Identity (mathematics) Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''Identity'' (1987 film), an Iranian film * ''Identity'' (2003 film), ...
. In fact, if the ''Number'' type is ''abstract'', it may not even be possible to get your hands on an object whose ''most-derived'' type is ''Number'' (see abstract data type,
abstract class In programming languages, an abstract type is a type in a nominative type system that cannot be instantiated directly; a type that is not abstract – which ''can'' be instantiated – is called a ''concrete type''. Every instance of an abstrac ...
). This particular kind of type hierarchy is known—especially in the context of the Scheme programming language—as a ''
numerical tower In Scheme (programming language), Scheme and in Lisp (programming language), Lisp dialects inspired by it, the numerical tower is a set of data types that represent numbers and a logic for their hierarchical organisation. Each type in the tower c ...
'', and usually contains many more types. Object-oriented programming languages offer subtype polymorphism using '' subclassing'' (also known as '' inheritance''). In typical implementations, each class contains what is called a ''
virtual table In computer programming, a virtual method table (VMT), virtual function table, virtual call table, dispatch table, vtable, or vftable is a mechanism used in a programming language to support dynamic dispatch (or run-time method binding). When ...
''—a table of functions that implement the polymorphic part of the class interface—and each object contains a pointer to the "vtable" of its class, which is then consulted whenever a polymorphic method is called. This mechanism is an example of: * '' late binding'', because virtual function calls are not bound until the time of invocation; * '' single dispatch'' (i.e. single-argument polymorphism), because virtual function calls are bound simply by looking through the vtable provided by the first argument (the this object), so the runtime types of the other arguments are completely irrelevant. The same goes for most other popular object systems. Some, however, such as Common Lisp Object System, provide '' multiple dispatch'', under which method calls are polymorphic in ''all'' arguments. The interaction between parametric polymorphism and subtyping leads to the concepts of variance and
bounded quantification In type theory, bounded quantification (also bounded polymorphism or constrained genericity) refers to universal or existential quantifiers which are restricted ("bounded") to range only over the subtypes of a particular type. Bounded quantificati ...
.


Row polymorphism

Row polymorphism is a similar, but distinct concept from subtyping. It deals with structural types. It allows the usage of all values whose types have certain properties, without losing the remaining type information.


Polytypism

A related concept is ''polytypism'' (or ''data type genericity''). A polytypic function is more general than polymorphic, and in such a function, "though one can provide fixed ad hoc cases for specific data types, an ad hoc combinator is absent".


Implementation aspects


Static and dynamic polymorphism

Polymorphism can be distinguished by when the implementation is selected: statically (at compile time) or dynamically (at run time, typically via a virtual function). This is known respectively as ''
static dispatch In computing, static dispatch is a form of polymorphism fully resolved during compile time. It is a form of ''method dispatch,'' which describes how a language or environment will select which implementation of a method or function to use. Ex ...
'' and '' dynamic dispatch,'' and the corresponding forms of polymorphism are accordingly called ''static polymorphism'' and ''dynamic polymorphism''. Static polymorphism executes faster, because there is no dynamic dispatch overhead, but requires additional compiler support. Further, static polymorphism allows greater static analysis by compilers (notably for optimization), source code analysis tools, and human readers (programmers). Dynamic polymorphism is more flexible but slower—for example, dynamic polymorphism allows duck typing, and a dynamically linked library may operate on objects without knowing their full type. Static polymorphism typically occurs in ad hoc polymorphism and parametric polymorphism, whereas dynamic polymorphism is usual for subtype polymorphism. However, it is possible to achieve static polymorphism with subtyping through more sophisticated use of template metaprogramming, namely the curiously recurring template pattern. When polymorphism is exposed via a library, static polymorphism becomes impossible for
dynamic libraries In computing, a dynamic linker is the part of an operating system that loads and links the shared libraries needed by an executable when it is executed (at "run time"), by copying the content of libraries from persistent storage to RAM, fillin ...
as there is no way of knowing what types the parameters are when the shared object is built. While languages like C++ and Rust use monomorphized templates, the
Swift programming language Swift is a general-purpose programming language, general-purpose, multi-paradigm programming language, multi-paradigm, compiled language, compiled programming language developed by Apple Inc. and Open-source-software movement, the open-source ...
makes extensive use of dynamic dispatch to build the application binary interface for these libraries by default. As a result, more code can be shared for a reduced system size at the cost of runtime overhead.


See also

* Duck typing for polymorphism without (static) types * Polymorphic code (computer virus terminology) * System F for a
lambda calculus Lambda calculus (also written as ''λ''-calculus) is a formal system in mathematical logic for expressing computation based on function abstraction and application using variable binding and substitution. It is a universal model of computation ...
with parametric polymorphism. *
Type class In computer science, a type class is a type system construct that supports ad hoc polymorphism. This is achieved by adding constraints to type variables in parametrically polymorphic types. Such a constraint typically involves a type class T and ...
* Type theory * Virtual inheritance


References


External links


C++ examples of polymorphism

Objects and Polymorphism (Visual Prolog)

Polymorphism on MSDN


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