The chameleon changes colour as it needs to. If somebody asked you what colour it was, you could say (smiling knowingly), 'Why, it's polymorphic'. Polymorphism is a big word. It is also is a key concept in object oriented programming. Poly means many...morph means change (or 'form'). Many changes of form...or changes of form by many. Ta Dah! Polymorphism is simply a name given to an action that is performed by similar objects. Polymorphism allows a common data-gathering message to be sent to each class and allows each subclass object to respond to a message format in an appropriate manner to its own properties. Polymorphism encourages something we call 'extendibility'. In other words, an object or a class can have it's uses extended Polymorphism is the ability to take several forms. In object-oriented programming, this refers to the ability of an object (or a reference to an object) to become different forms of objects. Class-based inheritance is also closely related to polymorphism. The same operations that apply to instances of a parent class also apply to instances of its subclasses. This kind of polymorphism is sometimes called subclass polymorphism. It is possible to have support for polymorphism without class-based inheritance. Polymorphism enhances software reusability by making it possible to implement generic software that will work not only for a range of existing objects, but also for objects to be added later.
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