so in java you can't have duplicate method names with different return and params?

Question

Is it possible to have two methods with the same name but different parameters and return types in Java? Seems like it would be a good way to generalize a simple getter and setter.. You can do that with constructors why not with regular methods ? for example

why not be able to do ..

int getVal() {

return int;
}

boolean getVal() {

return true;

}

setVal(int a) {
}

and

setVal(boolean a) {

}

Answer 1

What would you expect if I called:

getVal();

with no return vaue being collected ? You have two choices - either the boolean or the integer variant. Since you can't enforce the return value to be collected, the compiler can't determine which variant to be called.

You can overload on method parameters, but not on the return types alone, since that's ambiguous (as shown above).

Answer 2

Because then the compiler would be unable to figure out:

setVal(getVal());

should it call the bool or int version?