Julia: High Performance Programming

Multiple dispatch

A function is an object that maps a tuple of arguments to a return value. In a case where the arguments are not valid, the function should handle the situation cleanly by catching the error and handling it or throw an exception.

When a function is applied to its argument tuple, it selects the appropriate method and this process is called dispatch. In traditional object-oriented languages, a method is chosen based only on the object type and this paradigm is termed single dispatch. With Julia, the combination of all function arguments determines which method is chosen; this is the basis of multiple dispatch.

To the scientific programmer, all this seems very natural. It makes little sense in most circumstances for one argument to ...