RE: [Plplot-devel] single<-->double

[Alan W. I. <ir...@be...>]

On Thu, 1 Nov 2001, Geoffrey Furnish wrote:

> Right, this is called overloading.
>
>  > Java sorts it out (I assume through the magic of OOP) into a call
>
> Overloading is accomplished through a technique known as "name
> mangling", whereby the compiler synthesizes the name of the function
> to be called from a combination of its given name, plus the number and
> types of the presented arguments.  Once the name is generated, the
> linker just has to hook up the name to the address of the function.

Thanks for that explanation.  I had heard of name mangling in the context
that g++ was having to deal with some name mangling issues for the
transition to 3.0, but this is the first time I have understood the purpose
of name mangling. One of the real pleasures of my participation in the
plplot project is it gives me a chance to greatly expand my programming
knowledge. I have always enjoyed learning new programming concepts, but only
if there was some practical focus, such as plplot, for that learning effort.

Alan