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Subclassing

Subclassing is a principle of creating a specialization(subclass/ derived class) of a base class(superclass/ parent class) by inheriting the methods and instance data from the baseclass.

Why do we Subclass?

1. Code reuse 2. Specialization: A subclass can define new methods it's superclass does not handle. 3. Method Overriding: An overridding method can either have minor modifications or be completely changed from its parent class' implementation.

Is Subclassing same as Subtyping?

Subtyping

A is said to be a type of B if A's specification is same as B's. Subtypes should satisfy the Liskov Substitution Principle which states,

 If for each object o1 of type S there is an object o2 of type T such that for all programs P defined in terms of T, the behavior of 
 P is unchanged when o1 is substituted for o2, then S is a subtype of T.

In most programming languages,for example java, ruby, C++, subclassing does not essentially mean subtyping. For a class to be a subtype, the subclass must follow the Liskov Substitution Principle. However it is easy to override a method with a completely new implementation and with stronger constraints. This is not checked by the compiler and we can create subclasses which are not subtypes. This is considered a bad approach, one of the reasons being, an argument to a method may be declared of one class A, but the method may be called with an argument of some subclass B. If we do not know if B is a true subtype of A, then we cannot assume that the behavior guaranteed by A is actually guaranteed by B, and so we cannot reason locally about this method[link mit reference].

Subclass not Subtype

 class A {
   int x;
   int get_x()
   { 
     return x;
   }
   int sum(A a) { return x + a.x }
 }

 class B {
   int y;
   int get_y()
   { 
     return y;
   }
   int sum(B b) 
   { 
     if(y > 0)
       return x + b.x + y + b.y;
     else
       return 0;
   }
 }

Subtype

 class A {
   int x;
   int get_x()
   { 
     return x;
   }
   int sum(A a) { return x + a.x }
 }

 class B {
   int y;
   int get_y()
   { 
     return y;
   }
   int product(B b) 
   { 
     return x * y * b.x * b.y;
   }
 }

References

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/comphelp/v7v91/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.aix.cbl.doc%2Ftpoot30.htm

http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.170/old-www/2001-Spring/recitations/recitation4.html