Function Overloading and Function Overriding are also known as Static and Dynamic Polymorphism
- Method overriding means having a different implementation of the same method in the inherited class.
- Method overloading means having two or more methods with the same name but different signatures.
- Overridden methods would have the same signature, but different implementation.
- Overloaded methods have different signature but the same name.
- One of the overridden methods would exist in the base class and another in the derived class. These cannot exist in the same class.
- Overloaded methods can exist in base class and derived class or in the same class.
- Overriding is resolved at runtime.(Dynamic Polymorphism)
- Overloading is resolved at compile time.(Static Polymorphism)
- You can not override static, final and private methods
- You can overload static, final or private methods
- An overloaded method can throw any exception thrown / not thrown by the method it overloads.
- An overriding method can only throw those checked Exceptions and subclasses of these Exceptions, that are thrown by the method it overrides. The overriding method can throw any Runtime Exception.
- Access Specifier of Overriding method can be only greater than or equal to the access specifier of the overridden method.
- Overloading methods can have any access specifiers
Here is an excellent example - http://stackoverflow.com/a/154939/602683
