In inheritance, one class inherits the members of another class. The class that inherits is called a subclass or derived class. The other class is called a superclass or base class.
In our car example, Sedan and Truck are subclasses (or derived classes). They will inherit members from a new class called Vehicle, which is the superclass (or base class).
Before using inheritance, both classes had:
Wheels,LicensePlate, andSpeedpropertiesHonk(),SpeedUp(), andSlowDown()methods- Similar constructors
We can pull these out of both classes and put it in a Vehicle class. Sedan and Truck will still have access to those members, but we only need to write them in one place.
By the way, this inheritance hierarchy can extend either way: a new PickupTruck class could inherit from Truck, which inherits from Vehicle, which inherits from a new Machine class. The only rule is that a class can only inherit from one base class, e.g. Vehicle can’t inherit from Machine and Contraption.
Instructions
Take a look at this diagram representing inheritance.
SedanandTruckinherit fromVehicle- Members in black font are defined in that class
- Members in grey font have been inherited from a superclass
For example, Wheels is defined in the Vehicle class and inherited by Sedan and Truck. Truck() is defined only in the Truck class.