Date:	Sun, 7 Mar 1999 15:58:48 -0500
Message-Id:	<199903072058.PAA14195@envy.delorie.com>
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From:	DJ Delorie <dj AT delorie DOT com>
To:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com
In-reply-to:	<7bunlf$f86$1@camel29.mindspring.com>
	(rlark DOT at DOT mbhs DOT dot DOT edu AT delorie DOT com)
Subject:	Re: Pointers to functions.
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> Doesn't function overloading accomplish the same thing?  For example -
> int add(int, int);
> float add(float, float);
> char * add(char *, char *);

Function overloading isn't available in C, and can't be used for
runtime selection of alternate functions.

> all add different object types.  How is this different from what you
> were saying?

One example is the FSEXT module in djgpp.  When you initialize an
extension, it calls the fsext library and passes it a pointer to one
of its functions which handles those files.  The fsext library stores
a list of such functions as pointers to functions, and later calls
them.  The fsext library can't possibly use a compile-time option,
because to do so would mean that *I* would have to know about all
possible third-party extensions when I wrote the fsext portion of the
C library!

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