Difference between revisions of "Inheritance"
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Latest revision as of 07:34, 22 February 2012
In object-oriented programming (OOP), inheritance is a way to reuse code of existing objects, establish a subtype from an existing object, or both, depending upon programming language support. In classical inheritance where objects are defined by classes, classes can inherit attributes and behavior (i.e., previously coded algorithms associated with a class) from pre-existing classes called base classes or superclasses or parent classes or ancestor classes. The new classes are known as derived classes or subclasses or child classes. The relationships of classes through inheritance gives rise to a hierarchy. In prototype-based programming, objects can be defined directly from other objects without the need to define any classes, in which case this feature is called differential inheritance.
