Object Oriented programming

Introduction to inheritance in Object Oriented programming:

One of the most important concepts in object-oriented programming is that of inheritance. Inheritance allows us to define a class in terms of another class, which makes it easier to create and maintain an application. This also provides an opportunity to reuse the code functionality and fast implementation time.

When creating a class, instead of writing completely new data members and member functions, the programmer can designate that the new class should inherit the members of an existing class. This existing class is called the base class, and the new class is referred to as the derived class.

The idea of inheritance implements the is a relationship. For example, mammal IS-A animal, dog IS-A mammal hence dog IS-A animal as well and so on.

Base & Derived Classes:

A class can be derived from more than one class, which means it can inherit data and functions from multiple base classes. To define a derived class, we use a class derivation list to specify the base-class (es). A class derivation list names one or more base classes and has the form:

Class derived-class: access-specifier base-class

Where access-specifier is one of public, protected, or private, and base-class is the name of a previously defined class. If the access-specifier is not used, then it is private by default.

Access Control and Inheritance

A derived class can access all the non-private members of its base class. Thus base-class members that should not be accessible to the member functions of derived classes should be declared private in the base class.

A derived class inherits all base class methods with the following exceptions:

1. Constructors, destructors and copy constructors of the base class.

2. Overloaded operators of the base class.

3. The friend functions of the base class.

Thanks

Mukesh Rajput