[GROOVY-7767] Single-parameter method chosen zero parameters passed

• Type: Sub-task
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Information Provided
• Affects Version/s: 2.4.6
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Mike Martin
• Created: 24/Feb/16 22:29
• Updated: 04/Sep/23 14:49
• Resolved: 04/Sep/23 14:49

Description

When there is a single variant of a given method name, and that method has a single parameter, then calls to that method with zero arguments will result in a call to the method with a value of null, even though the no argument is present in the actual method call. This is surprising and leads to silent errors. Instead, I would expect groovy to throw an error saying that no matching method could be found.

Example:

new A()

class A {

    A(){
        m()
    }

    void m(String param){
        println "param: $param"
    }
}

Running the code above yields:

param: null

But I would expect it to yield something like:

Caught: groovy.lang.MissingMethodException: No signature of method: A.m() is applicable for argument types: () values: []
Possible solutions: m(java.lang.String), is(java.lang.Object), dump(), any(), any(groovy.lang.Closure), use([Ljava.lang.Object;)
groovy.lang.MissingMethodException: No signature of method: A.m() is applicable for argument types: () values: []
Possible solutions: m(java.lang.String), is(java.lang.Object), dump(), any(), any(groovy.lang.Closure), use([Ljava.lang.Object;)
        at A.<init>(testClass2.groovy:8)
        at testClass2.run(testClass2.groovy:3)