Groovy Multimethods

One of the features of the Groovy language is multi-methods and how it differs from Java in the way it invokes methods. Java selects which methods to invoke based on the compile-time declared types of arguments. Groovy selects which methods to invoke based on the runtime types of the objects and arguments.

As an example, consider the following listing:

The x and y arguments are both of static (compile-time) type Object but x is of dynamic (runtime) type Integer and y is of dynamic type String. As a consequence, in Java both would dispatch to the same oracle(Object) method. However, in Groovy due to method dispatch being dynamic, the oracle(String) method is used when argument y is passed.

This has the benefit of avoiding duplicate code by being able to override more selective behaviour. Consider the following equals implementation that overrides Object's default equals method only for the argument type Point.

When an object of type Point is passed to the equals method, the specialized implementation is chosen. When an arbitrary object is passed, the default implementation of its superclass Object.equals is called. This gives the impression that equals(Point) is overriding equals(Object), which is impossible in Java. In Java, it would be necessary to check for null, check that argument is of the required Point type, cast the object to Point, and then perform the specific equals logic. This forces the developer to duplicate the logic of overriding equals for every custom type.