Programming Forums - View Single Post - A standards question, optional inputs into Methods

Arla · Apr 26th, 2005, 12:14 PM

I'm creating a few methods that have a number of optional inputs

Quick example, say you have a method that prints Hello <name> where <name> is optional input parameter (I know, it's a ridiculously simple example, but bare with me)

so you have two options

I can do

(Toggle Plain Text)

public void PrintHi()
{
  code
}

public void PrintHi(string name)
{
  code
}

which would work fine, but when you have say 10 optional variables and you can have any combinations of them it's quite a lot of different methods (plus you start running into issues if all your variables are of the same type). However the other way, just having one method with the variables all in, but allowing null/0/? inputs for the optional portions seems somewhat clumsy, anyone have other ideas? or other ways this "should" be done?

Apr 26th, 2005, 12:14 PM	#1
Arla Professional Programmer Join Date: Mar 2005 Posts: 343 Rep Power: 4	A standards question, optional inputs into Methods I'm creating a few methods that have a number of optional inputs Quick example, say you have a method that prints Hello <name> where <name> is optional input parameter (I know, it's a ridiculously simple example, but bare with me) so you have two options I can do (Toggle Plain Text) public void PrintHi() { code } public void PrintHi(string name) { code } public void PrintHi() { code } public void PrintHi(string name) { code } which would work fine, but when you have say 10 optional variables and you can have any combinations of them it's quite a lot of different methods (plus you start running into issues if all your variables are of the same type). However the other way, just having one method with the variables all in, but allowing null/0/? inputs for the optional portions seems somewhat clumsy, anyone have other ideas? or other ways this "should" be done?