Java™ How To Program (Early Objects), Tenth Edition

20.5 Overloading Generic Methods

A generic method may be overloaded like any other method. A class can provide two or more generic methods that specify the same method name but different method parameters. For example, generic method printArray of Fig. 20.3 could be overloaded with another printArray generic method with the additional parameters lowSubscript and highSubscript to specify the portion of the array to output (see Exercise 20.5).

A generic method can also be overloaded by nongeneric methods. When the compiler encounters a method call, it searches for the method declaration that best matches the method name and the argument types specified in the call—an error occurs if two or more overloaded methods both could be considered best ...