Why dont languages allow overloading of methods by return value?

Question

c, java and many other languages do not pay attention to return values.

int   i = func()
float f = func()
int   func() { return 5 }
float func() { return 1.3         


        

Answer 1

What about this case?

class A implements Foo { /*...*/ }
class B implements Foo { /*...*/ }

A func() { return new A(); }
B func() { return new B(); }

Foo v = func(); // which do you call?!

There are already problems with ambiguity when you allow overloading of a single function name that take different arguments. Having to check the return type as well would probably make resolving the right function a lot harder.

I'm sure a language could implement that, but it would make things a lot more complicated, and would generally make the code harder to understand.