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 http://multiple-dispatch.readthedocs.org/

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

What this doesn't do

Vararg dispatch

@dispatch([int])
def add(*args):
    ...

Diagonal dispatch

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

Installation and Dependencies

multipledispatch is on the Python Package Index (PyPI):

pip install multipledispatch

easy_install multipledispatch

multipledispatch supports Python 2.6+ and Python 3.2+ with a common codebase. It is pure Python and requires no dependencies beyond the standard library.

It is, in short, a light weight dependency.

License

New BSD. See License.