CSC/ECE 517 Spring 2013/ch1a 1e pi

Inheritance

In object-oriented programming (OOP), inheritance is a way to reuse code of existing objects, or to establish a subtype from an existing object, or both

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Means of achieving inheritance

Classical Inheritance Objects are defined by classes, classes can inherit attributes and behavior from pre-existing classes called base classes, superclasses, or parent classes. The resulting classes are known as derived classes, subclasses, or child classes. The relationships of classes through inheritance gives rise to a hierarchy.

Prototype Based Inheritance A feature of object-oriented programming in which classes are not present and inheritance is performed via a process of cloning existing objects that serve as prototypes .  Delegation is the language feature that supports prototype-based programming.

A simple example of Prototype Based Inheritance could be depicted as

References

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototype-based_programming

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegation_(programming)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloning_(programming)