Multiple Dispatch

A relatively sane approach to multiple dispatch in Python.

This implementation of multiple dispatch is efficient, mostly complete, performs static analysis to avoid conflicts, and provides optional namespace support. It looks good too.

See the documentation at https://multiple-dispatch.readthedocs.io/

Example

>>> from multipledispatch import dispatch

>>> @dispatch(int, int)
... def add(x, y):
...     return x + y

>>> @dispatch(object, object)
... def add(x, y):
...     return "%s + %s" % (x, y)

>>> add(1, 2)
3

>>> add(1, 'hello')
'1 + hello'

What this does

Dispatches on all non-keyword arguments
Supports inheritance
Supports instance methods
Supports union types, e.g. (int, float)
Supports builtin abstract classes, e.g. Iterator, Number, ...
Caches for fast repeated lookup
Identifies possible ambiguities at function definition time
Provides hints to resolve ambiguities when they occur
Supports namespaces with optional keyword arguments
Supports variadic dispatch

What this doesn't do

Diagonal dispatch

a = arbitrary_type()
@dispatch(a, a)
def are_same_type(x, y):
    return True

Efficient update: The addition of a new signature requires a full resolve of the whole function. This becomes troublesome after you get to a few hundred type signatures.

Installation and Dependencies

multipledispatch is on the Python Package Index (PyPI):

pip install multipledispatch

It is Pure-Python and depends only on the standard library. It is a light weight dependency.

License

New BSD. See License file.