Parametric Polymorphism

What Does Parametric Polymorphism Mean?

Parametric polymorphism is a programming language technique that enables the generic definition of functions and types, without a great deal of concern for type-based errors. It allows language to be more expressive while writing generic code that applies to various types of data. Functions written in context with parametric polymorphism work on various data types.

Techopedia Explains Parametric Polymorphism

Parametric polymorphism is the core principle behind generic programming languages and structures. It enables the creation of generic functions and data types that operate on values, regardless of data type.

For example, if a programming function operates on two different values, the values may be attached, even though they do not have the same data types. An example is joining a list of integers with a floating point value.

Ada, Haskell, Visual Prolog, Scala, Java and C# are programming languages that support parametric polymorphism.