Inheritance in Cpp

 INHERITANCE 

 INTRODUCTION 

• Inheritance is the feature by which objects of one class acquire the properties of objects of another class .

• It is the mechanism of deriving a new class from an old one.

• It supports the concept of hierarchical classification.

• The concept of inheritance provides the idea of reusability .

• This means we can add additional features to an existing class without modifying it .

• This is possible by deriving a new class from an existing one .

• The new derived class will have the features of the existing class as well as its own unique features .

• Inheritance allows the implementation of data members or member functions that were previously defined.

ADVANTAGES 

• The application can be built over previously available module.

• Extension of any application is rapid .

• The codes that were previously tested can be used as the foundation for newer modules.

• Time and cost of development is controlled. 

Syntax

class derived_class_name : visibility_mode class base_class_name {

     //members of derived class 

    private: ……… 

    protected: ……… 

    public: ……… 

};

• base_class_name – The name of the base/parent/super class from which the new class will inherit its features 

• derived_class_name – The name of the derived/child/sub class which acquires the properties of the old existing class 

• visibility_mode -

1. Determines the mode of derivation of features into the child class 
2. Can be private, protected or public 
3.  The default visibility mode is private(optional, if not written, it is considered  private)

TYPES OF INHERITANCE 

1. Single Inheritance 
2. Multiple Inheritance 
3. Multilevel Inheritance 
4. Hierarchical Inheritance 
5. Hybrid Inheritance

CPP