Overloading in C++: How Does It Really Work?

Walter E Brown

60 minute presentation
advanced
intermediate
beginner
18:00-19:00, Friday, 2nd July 2021

Overloading has been part of C++ since its beginning, and is the subject of an entire chapter ("Clause") in the C++ Standard. This talk will provide an in-depth look at this oft-overlooked language feature.

Beginning with basic definitions and plenty of examples, we will go on to discuss many of the finer points of overloading and overload resolution. We will culminate with an advanced example of overloading in a non-traditional context.

Walter E Brown

With broad experience in industry, academia, consulting, and research, Dr. Walter E. Brown has been a C++ programmer for 40 years.

He joined the C++ standards effort in 2000, and has since written circa 170 proposal papers. Among numerous other contributions, he is responsible for introducing such now-standard C++ library features as cbegin/cend, common_type, gcd/lcm, void_t, and <cmath>’s mathematical special functions, as well as the headers <random> and <ratio>. He has also significantly impacted such C++ core language features as alias templates, contextual conversions, variable templates, static_assert, and operator<=> (the C++20 “spaceship operator”).