#1,136 – Overloading a Generic Method

In the same way that you can overload a generic class, you can overload a generic method, defining multiple generic methods having the same name but different type parameters.  You can also define non-generic methods with the same name.

Below, we overload the Dog.Bury method, defining several non-generic and several generic methods.

    public class Dog
    {
        public string Name { get; set; }

        public Dog(string name)
        {
            Name = name;
        }

        public void Bury(Bone b)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("{0} is burying: {1}", Name, b);
        }

        public void Bury(Lawyer l)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("{0} is burying: {1}", Name, l);
        }

        public void Bury<T>(T thing)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("{0} is burying: {1}", Name, thing);
        }

        public void Bury<T>(T thing, string msg)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("{0} : {1}", msg, thing);
        }

        public void Bury<T1, T2>(T1 thing1, T2 thing2)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("{0} is burying: {1}", Name, thing1);
            Console.WriteLine("{0} is burying: {1}", Name, thing2);
        }
    }

We can call these methods as follows:

            Dog fido = new Dog("Fido");

            fido.Bury(new Bone());
            fido.Bury(new Lawyer());
            fido.Bury<Cow>(new Cow("Bessie"));
            fido.Bury<Lawyer>(new Lawyer(), "One less lawyer");
            fido.Bury<Cow,Cat>(new Cow("Bessie"), new Cat("Puffy"));