Method Overloading with different return type [duplicate]

Answer 1

any one having any experience with this, overloading on return type with different parameters should be a bad practice, is it.

I'm taking that to mean - "is it bad practice to use differing parameter combinations to facilitate different return types" - if that is indeed the question, then just imagine someone else coming across this code in a few months time - effectively "dummy" parameters to determine return type...it would be quite hard to understand what's going on.

Edit - as ChrisLava points out "the way around this is to have better names for each function (instead of overloading). Names that have clear meaning within the application. There is no reason why Bar should return an int and a string. I could see just calling ToString() on the int"

Answer 2

Your code will result in a Compiler Error. You can not have a Method of the same name with the same parameters and a different return type, the caller would not know which Method to call (will not be able to resolve the location in Memory of the Method to call, why the Compiler would not allow it). Your alternative would be to return an Object and Cast it based on what the Caller knows. Even then, that appears to be Bad design.

This will Work (meaning Compile), but still bad design.

public class Foo
{
    public object Bar(int a)
    {
        return a;
    }
}

Answer 3

You can not overload the function by differing only their return type. You can only overload the function in the following ways

1. Parameter types
2. Number of parameters
3. Order of the parameters declared in the method

You can not come to know which function is actually called (if it was possible).

One more thing I would like to add is function overloading is providing a function with the same name, but with a different signature. but the return type of a method is not considered as a part of the method's signature.

So this is another way to understand why method overloading can't be done only by return type.