Different form of method overloading

Question

I have seen similar questions to this one. However, I could not find an exact answer to this. I want to know the best approach of following ones based on circumstances. Please explain advantages and disadvantages of case 1 and case 2?.

Case 1 :

  public class Test {

    public void method1(String s) {
        System.out.println("String s");
    }

    public void method1(String s, String a) {
        System.out.println("String s" + "String a");
    }
}

Case 2:

I wrote the code in following way. It is a simple logic, I wanted to demonstrate only the implementation

public class Test {

    public void method1(String s) {
        new Test().methodImpl(s,null);
    }

    public void method1(String s, String a) {
        new Test().methodImpl(s,a);
    }

    public void methodImpl(String x , String y){
        if(y!=null){
            System.out.println("String s" + "String a");
        }else if(y==null){
            System.out.println("String s");
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

I like to do it a slightly different way which I think allows for more flexibility. It can eliminate the need for a lot of different overloading. The example method below eliminates the need of all the methods contained within your Test Class and allows for more flexibility, for example:

It can optionally accept NONE to an unlimited number of string arguments:

new Test().method();

        or

new Test().method("This is a String.");

        or

new Test().method("This ", "is", " a", " string", " that", " will ", "be", " displayed.");

It can also accept a Single Dimensional (1D) String Array as a single argument.

String[] stringArray = {This ", "is", " a", " string", " that", " will ", "be", " displayed."}; 
new Test().method(stringArray);

If you look at the Test Class below you can see that only one method is required:

public class Test {

    public void method(String... args) {
    if (args.length > 0) {
        // Build the string from the supplied string arguments...
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        for (String strg : args) {
            // A 'Ternary Operator' is used below in case an argument is null.
            sb.append(strg == null ? "" : strg);
        }
        System.out.println(sb.toString()); // Display built string in console.
    }

}

What can you do if the parameter for this method was: Object... args?

I sometimes use this technique for class Constructors as well, for example:

public class Test {

    // Class Constructor
    public Test (String... args) {
        method(args);
    }

    public void method(String... args) {
    if (args.length > 0) {
        // Build the string from the supplied string arguments...
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        for (String strg : args) {
            // A 'Ternary Operator' is used below in case an argument is null.
            sb.append(strg == null ? "" : strg);
        }
        System.out.println(sb.toString()); // Display built string in console.
    }

} 

And to use it:

String[] stringArray = {"This ", "is", " a ", "string", " that", " will ", "be", " displayed."}; 
new Test(stringArray);  // You will notice a warning but it works.

or

new Test();  // You will notice a warning but it works.

or 

new Test("This is one Argument");  // You will notice a warning but it works.

or

new Test("This ", "is", " many ", "Arguments.");  // You will notice a warning but it works.

or 

Test test = new Test("This ", "is", " many ", "Arguments.");

or 

Test test = new Test();
test.method("This is one Argument");

or

String[] args = {"This ", "is", " many ", "Arguments."};
Test test = new Test(args);
test.method(args);

The last example will display: This is many Arguments. twice in console. Can you see why?

Answer 2

These aren't different forms of overloading per se; there's only one form of overloading in Java (you could argue that eh C#'s optional parameters achieve the intent of overloading) which is to provide multiple methods with different signatures.

Your examples are a little too simplistic to be useful for explaining because they don't really save any code. Case 1 duplicates code meaning it becomes a maintenance nightmare, and case 2 makes the method list messy and the implementation messy because it just becomes a massive if statement again with duplicated code because you've dumped entire method bodies into an if - it turns 4 lines of code into 7 and it didn't solve anything that case 1 presented as a problem; if you find a bug you still have to change it in two places.

Consider a more realistic example, and instead let's have a method that does the work and then other overloads that just call it (it might not be a perfect example but it sprang to mind as a common operation that is fairly self explanatory):

public SendEmail(string to, string message){
  SendEmail(to, message, null);
}

public SendEmail(string to, string message, Credentials c){

  MailClient mc = new MailClient();
  if(c == null){
    if(!to.endsWith("@local"))
      // throw exception; non local email delivery requires a credential
  } else {
    mc.Credentials = c;
  }

  mc.Send(to, message);
}

Here we have one implementation, we do some if statements that partially change the behaviour, rather than duplicating an entire method body inside the if / else blocks, without repeated code and we have the simpler overload call the more extensive one

A lot of things in coding are personal choice but this is how I would expect to see "overloading for the sake of providing simplified versions of a complex method call". By contrast I don't find either of your cases to have any particular advantages over each other that aren't cancelled out by their disadvantages; case 1 is neater but duplicates code, case 2 is messier than necessary, and duplicates code, but does partly aim for the "simple signatures calling complex signatures" route

Answer 3

In case 1 you need to write duplicate logic code in each method and in case 2 you have written extra method that we can reduce as per below code

public class Test {

public void method1(String s) {
   method1(s,null);
}

public void method1(String s, String a) {
    if(a!=null){
       System.out.println("String s" + "String a");
    }else{
       System.out.println("String s");
    }
}

}