Method Overloading in Java:

• Method Overloading occurs when a class has multiple methods with the same name but different parameters.
• Compile-time (or static) polymorphism is linked to overloading.
• The readability of the program is improved by method overloading.
• We don’t have to develop new names for functions that do the same thing.

Overloading the method in various ways:

In Java, there are two ways to overload a method.

• Altering the number of arguments
• Modifying the data type

1) Change the number of arguments in the method.

We have created an adding class with methods add(int, int) and add(int, int, int), i.e, we are overloading the methods by altering the number of arguments.

class Adding
{  
   static int add(int a,int b)
   {
    return a+b;
    
   }  
  static int add(int a,int b,int c)
  {
    return a+b+c;
    
  }  
}  
class Test{  
public static void main(String[] args)
  {  
    System.out.println(Adding.add(25,15));  
   System.out.println(Adding.add(11,15,19));  
  }
    
}  

Output:

40
45

2) Overloading methods: changing the data type of arguments

In this example, we have created an adding class with methods add(int, int) and add(String, String), note, that here the number of arguments is the same, but the data type of argument is different.

class Adding
{  
   static int add(int a,int b)
   {
    return a+b;
    
   }  
  static String add(String a,String b)
  {
    return a+b;
    
  }  
}  
class Test{  
public static void main(String[] args)
  {  
    System.out.println(Adding.add(25,15));  
   System.out.println(Adding.add("coder","zpy"));  
  }
    
}  

Output:

40
coderzpy

Why is method overloading not possible simply by changing the method’s return type? Because of ambiguity, method overloading in Java is not possible by changing the method’s return type.

Can the main() method in Java be overloaded?
Yes, by method overloading. Method overloading allows you to have any number of main methods in a class. However, JVM calls the main() method, which only takes a string array as an argument.

Example:

// A Java program with overloaded main()
import java.io.*;

public class Test {

	// Normal main()
	public static void main(String[] args)
	{
		System.out.println("coderzpy (from main) 1");
		Test.main("coderzpy!");
	}

	// Overloaded main methods
	public static void main(String arg1)
	{
		System.out.println("Hi, " + arg1);
		Test.main("coderpy ", "student");
	}
	public static void main(String arg1, String arg2)
	{
		System.out.println("Hi, " + arg1 + ", " + arg2);
	}
}

Output:

coderzpy (from main) 1
Hi, coderzpy!
Hi, coderpy , student

Is Operator Overloading supported in Java?
Java does not support user-defined overloaded operators, unlike C++. Java overloads operators internally; for example, the + operator is overloaded for concatenation.

Note: also read about the Association, Composition & Aggregation in Java

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