How to: Call an Overloaded Procedure

The advantage of overloading a procedure is in the flexibility of the call. The calling code can obtain the information it needs to pass to the procedure and then call a single procedure name, no matter what arguments it is passing.

To call a procedure that has more than one version defined

1. In the calling code, determine which data to pass to the procedure.

2. Write the procedure call in the normal way, presenting the data in the argument list. Be sure the arguments match the parameter list in one of the versions defined for the procedure.

3. You do not have to determine which version of the procedure to call. Visual Basic passes control to the version matching your argument list.

   The following example calls the post procedure declared in How to: Define Multiple Versions of a Procedure. It obtains the customer identification, determines whether it is a String or an Integer, and then in either case calls the same procedure.

   Imports MSVB = Microsoft.VisualBasic
   

   Dim customer As String 
   Dim accountNum As Integer 
   Dim amount As Single
   customer = MSVB.Interaction.InputBox("Enter customer name or number")
   amount = MSVB.Interaction.InputBox("Enter transaction amount")
   Try
       accountNum = CInt(customer)
       Call post(accountNum, amount)
   Catch 
       Call post(customer, amount)
   End Try
   

See Also

Tasks

Troubleshooting Procedures

How to: Define Multiple Versions of a Procedure

How to: Overload a Procedure that Takes Optional Parameters

How to: Overload a Procedure that Takes an Indefinite Number of Parameters

Concepts

Procedures in Visual Basic

Procedure Parameters and Arguments

Procedure Overloading

Considerations in Overloading Procedures

Overload Resolution

Reference

Overloads