Inheritance Types in OOP
What is Inheritance?
Inheritance is a very powerful feature of OOPs. It is a mechanism of acquiring properties or behaviors of existing class to a new class. In other words, A class inherits data fields or methods from another class.
For eg. Animal is a class and other classes like Dog, cat etc. can inherit the common properties of animal class.
Inheritance provides following benefits:
- Less development and maintenance costs
- Code reusability
- Reduces code redundancy and supports code extensibility
- Save time and effort to write codes
Types of inheritance
In Object-Oriented Programming (OOP), there are several types of inheritance. These types differ based on the number of superclasses and subclasses involved. Below are the main types of inheritance:
- Single Inheritance
- Multilevel Inheritance
- Multiple Inheritance
- Hierarchical Inheritance
- Hybrid Inheritance
1. Single Inheritance:
In this type, a subclass inherits from only one superclass. For example, in Java, if class X inherits from class A, it is written as:
class X extends A
Languages that support this type of inheritance include Java, C++, and Python.
2. Multiple Inheritance:
In this type, a subclass can inherit from more than one superclass. This type of inheritance is not supported in Java but can be seen in languages like C++ and Python. For example, if class C inherits from both class A and class B, it is written as:
class C extends A, B
3. Multilevel Inheritance:
In this type, inheritance occurs in a chain. One class inherits from another class, which in turn inherits from another class, and so on. For example, if class C inherits from class B and class B inherits from class A, it is written as:
class C extends B
class B extends A
This can be seen in languages like Java, C++, and Python.
4. Hierarchical Inheritance:
In this type, multiple subclasses inherit from a single superclass. For example, if class B and class C inherit from class A, it is written as:
class C extends B
class B extends A
This type can be seen in languages like Java, C++, and Python.
5. Hybrid Inheritance:
This type is a combination of two or more types of inheritance. For example, a combination of Hierarchical and Multiple Inheritance can form a Hybrid Inheritance. This type can be observed in languages like Python.
Happy Learning and Fun Coding!!!😊.
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