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definition of 'polymorphism' and python

Ben Sizer kylotan at gmail.com
Wed Dec 14 06:43:36 EST 2005 
Gabriel Zachmann wrote:
> I understand the Wikipedia article on Polymorphism
> ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymorphism_%28computer_science%29 )
> that it doesn't make sense to talk about polymorphism in a fully dynamically
> typed language -- does the Python community agree?

"In computer science, polymorphism means allowing a single definition
to be used with different types of data (specifically, different
classes of objects)."

>>> len("abcd")
4
>>> len([1,2,3,4,5,6])
6

Looks pretty polymorphic to me. In fact, Python's polymorphism support
is so good that it makes inheritance much less important than it is in
other languages.

-- 
Ben Sizer
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