inheritance

programming, object-oriented In object-orientedprogramming, the ability to derive new classes from

existing classes. A derived class (or "subclass") inherits

the instance variables and methods of the "base class"

(or "superclass"), and may add new instance variables and

methods. New methods may be defined with the same names as

those in the base class, in which case they override the

original one.

For example, bytes might belong to the class of integers for

which an add method might be defined. The byte class would

inherit the add method from the integer class.

See also Liskov substitution principle, multipleinheritance.

(2000-10-10)