As function overloading says:
Function overloading is absent in Python.
As far as I feel this a big handicap since its also an object-oriented (OO) language. Initially I found that unable to differentiate between the argument types was difficult, but the dynamic nature of Python made it easy (e.g. list, tuples, strings are much similar).
However, counting the number of arguments passed and then doing the job is like an overkill.
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You can pass a mutable container datatype into a function, and it can contain anything you want.
If you need a different functionality, name the functions differently, or if you need the same interface, just write an interface function (or method) that calls the functions appropriately based on the data received.
It took a while to me to get adjusted to this coming from Java, but it really isn't a "big handicap".
Oftentimes you see the suggestion use use keyword arguments, with default values, instead. Look into that.
You don't need function overloading, as you have the *args and **kwargs arguments.
The fact is that function overloading is based on the idea that passing different types you will execute different code. If you have a dynamically typed language like Python, you should not distinguish by type, but you should deal with interfaces and their compliance with the code you write.
For example, if you have code that can handle either an integer, or a list of integers, you can try iterating on it and if you are not able to, then you assume it's an integer and go forward. Of course it could be a float, but as far as the behavior is concerned, if a float and an int appear to be the same, then they can be interchanged.
Now, unless you're trying to write C++ code using Python syntax, what would you need overloading for?
I think it's exactly opposite. Overloading is only necessary to make strongly-typed languages act more like Python. In Python you have keyword argument, and you have *args and **kwargs.
See for example: What is a clean, Pythonic way to have multiple constructors in Python?
Source: Stackoverflow.com