Static Binding and Dynamic Binding

Question

I am really confused about dynamic binding and static binding. I have read that determining the type of an object at compile time is called static binding and determining it

Answer 1

This really depends on overloading and overriding if you did something like this:

public class Animal{}


public class Dog extends Animal{}

public class AnimalActivity{

    public void eat(Animal a){
        System.out.println("Animal is eating");
    }

    public void eat(Dog d){
        System.out.println("Dog is eating");
    }
}

then in the main class:

public static void main(String args[])
{
    Animal a=new Animal();
    Animal d=new Dog();
    AnimalActivity aa=new AnimalActivity();
    aa.eat(a);
    aa.eat(d);
}

the result in the two cases will be: Animal is eating

but lets twist it some, lets have this:

public class Animal{
    public void eat(){
        System.out.println("Animal is eating");
    }
}

then:

public class Dog extends Animal{
    public void eat(){
        System.out.println("Dog is eating");
    }
}

then in the main class:

public static void main(String args[]){
    Animal d=new Dog();
    Animal a=new Animal();
    a.eat();
    d.eat();
}

now the result should be:

Animal is eating
Dog is eating

this is because overloading binds at compile time "static binding" while overriding binds at run time "dynamic binding"