Why is method overloading not defined for different return types?

Question

In Scala, you can overload a method by having methods that share a common name, but which either have different arities or different parameter types. I was wondering why this wasn't also extended to the return type of a method? Consider the following code:

class C {
  def m: Int = 42
  def m: String = "forty two"
}

val c = new C
val i: Int = C.m
val s: String = C.m

Is there a reason why this shouldn't work?

Thank you,

Vincent.

Answer 1

Actually, you can make it work by the magic of 'implicit'. As following:

scala> case class Result(i: Int,s: String)

scala> class C {
     |     def m: Result = Result(42,"forty two")
     | }

scala> implicit def res2int(res: Result) = res.i

scala> implicit def res2str(res: Result) = res.s

scala> val c = new C

scala> val i: Int = c.m

i: Int = 42


scala> val s: String = c.m

s: String = forty two

scala>