Inheritance

A class inherits state and behavior from its superclass. Inheritance provides a powerful and natural mechanism for organizing and structuring software programs.

 

Examples:

 

Each subclass inherits state (in the form of variable declarations) from the superclass. Mountain bikes, racing bikes, and tandems share some states: cadence, speed, and the like. Also, each subclass inherits methods from the superclass. Mountain bikes, racing bikes, and tandems share some behaviors: braking and changing pedaling speed, for example.

 

• Subclasses can add their own variables and methods.
• Subclasses can also override inherited methods and provide specialized implementations for those methods.
  

  For example, if you had a mountain bike with an extra set of gears, you would override the "change gears" method so that the rider could use those new gears.

• The inheritance tree, or class hierarchy, can be as deep as needed. Methods and variables are inherited down through the levels.
  
  

  In C++: You can have multiple parents In Java: You can have only 1 parent