Why do several functions in iostream and fstream have identical name?

[Fatihah]

1. Why do several functions in iostream and fstream have identical name?

2.When it is suitable/advantages to reuse functions name?

[horace1]

it is called function overloading where the same function can vary in the types and number of parameters, e.g. get() in isteam

http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/iostream/istream/get/

when the function is called the compiler looks at the parameters and works out which version to call

for an introduction to function overloading see the tutorial

http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/functions2/