C++ for Scientists - Technische Universität Dresden

2.6. FUNCTIONS 43
foo takes one integer argument with default value 5 and one character argument with a default
value of ‘A’. Now this function can be called by one of the three methods shown here:
foo( 1, ’J’ );
foo(24);
foo();
Which results in the following output:
1 J
24 A
5 A
Void functions
When the result type of a function is void, we do not return a result. For example
void foo( int i ) {
std::cout ≪ ”My value is ” ≪ i ≪ std::endl ;
}
Constant arguments
We can use const objects as arguments in functions to protect them from being changed. For
example :
bool bar( int const& x, int y ) {
y = y+2;
return y ==x ;
}
Since we do not want to modify x, we can add the keyword const. Note that const can be put
before or behind the type, but it is recommended by the authors of this course to put it behind.
2.6.4 Overloading
In C ++, functions can share the same name as long as their parameter declarations are different.
More precisely, the functions should differ in the number or the type of their parameters.
The compiler can then use the number/type of the arguments to determine which version of
the overloaded function should be used. Note that although overloaded functions may have
different return types, a difference in return type alone is not sufficient to distinguish between
two versions of a function.
Consider the following example:
#include
#include
int divide (int a, int b){
return a / b ;
}