Polymorphism

Generally, the ability to appear in many forms. In object-oriented programming, polymorphism refers to a programming language's ability to process objects differently depending on their data type or class. More specifically, it is the ability to redefine methods for derived classes. For example, given a base class shape, polymorphism enables the programmer to define different circumference methods for any number of derived classes, such as circles, rectangles and triangles. No matter what shape an object is, applying the circumference method to it will return the correct results. Polymorphism is considered to be a requirement of any true object-oriented programming language (OOPL).The type of polymorphism described above is sometimes called parametric polymorphism to distinguish it from another type of polymorphism called overloading.