Polymorphism in OOPs

Polymorphism is one of the fundamental concepts in Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) that allows objects of different classes to be treated as objects of a common superclass. It provides a way to perform a single action in different ways by changing the method implementation in the derived classes.

Concept of allowing overriding of functions

Polymorphism in OOPs primarily refers to the concept of allowing the overriding of functions. Overriding is the process of redefining a method in the derived class that already exists in its superclass. By doing so, the derived class can provide its own implementation of the method, which may differ from the implementation in the superclass.

Polymorphism allows objects of different classes that inherit from the same superclass to be treated as objects of that superclass. This means that even though the objects may have different data and behavior, they can still be accessed and used using a common interface provided by the superclass. This promotes code reusability and flexibility in programming.

Example:
Consider a simple OOP scenario where we have a superclass called "Shape" and two subclasses called "Circle" and "Rectangle" that inherit from the Shape class. The Shape class has a method called "calculateArea" that calculates the area of the shape.

In the Circle class, we can override the "calculateArea" method to calculate the area of a circle using the formula specific to circles. Similarly, in the Rectangle class, we can override the same method to calculate the area of a rectangle using the formula specific to rectangles.

Now, if we create objects of both the Circle and Rectangle classes and store them in a list of Shape objects, we can iterate over the list and call the "calculateArea" method on each object without knowing the specific type of the object. This is possible because of polymorphism - the objects are treated as Shape objects, even though they are instances of different classes.

Conclusion
Polymorphism in OOPs allows objects of different classes to be treated as objects of a common superclass, enabling the use of a common interface for accessing and using these objects. This concept is primarily achieved through the overriding of functions in derived classes, providing different implementations for the same method defined in the superclass. Polymorphism promotes code reusability, flexibility, and abstraction in object-oriented programming.