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D Programming Inheritance Explained

Inheritance is a key concept in object-oriented programming that allows a new class to inherit properties and methods from an existing class, facilitating code reuse and easier application maintenance. The document explains the relationship between base and derived classes, including access control and multi-level inheritance, with examples in code. It highlights how derived classes can access non-private members of base classes while constructors and overloaded operators are not inherited.

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5 views3 pages

D Programming Inheritance Explained

Inheritance is a key concept in object-oriented programming that allows a new class to inherit properties and methods from an existing class, facilitating code reuse and easier application maintenance. The document explains the relationship between base and derived classes, including access control and multi-level inheritance, with examples in code. It highlights how derived classes can access non-private members of base classes while constructors and overloaded operators are not inherited.

Uploaded by

samia elsimarie
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

D - INHERITANCE

[Link] Copyright © [Link]

One of the most important concepts in object-oriented programming is that of inheritance.


Inheritance allows us to define a class in terms of another class, which makes it easier to create
and maintain an application. This also provides an opportunity to reuse the code functionality and
fast implementation time.

When creating a class, instead of writing completely new data members and member functions,
the programmer can designate that the new class should inherit the members of an existing class.
This existing class is called the base class, and the new class is referred to as the derived class.

The idea of inheritance implements the is a relationship. For example, mammal IS-A animal, dog
IS-A mammal hence dog IS-A animal as well and so on.

Base & Derived Classes:


A class can be derived from more than one classes, which means it can inherit data and functions
from multiple base classes. To define a derived class, we use a class derivation list to specify the
base classes. A class derivation list names one or more base classes and has the form:

class derived-class: base-class

Consider a base class Shape and its derived class Rectangle as follows:

import [Link];

// Base class
class Shape
{
public:
void setWidth(int w)
{
width = w;
}
void setHeight(int h)
{
height = h;
}
protected:
int width;
int height;
}

// Derived class
class Rectangle: Shape
{
public:
int getArea()
{
return (width * height);
}
}

void main()
{
Rectangle Rect = new Rectangle();

[Link](5);
[Link](7);

// Print the area of the object.


writeln("Total area: ", [Link]());

}
When the above code is compiled and executed, it produces the following result:

Total area: 35

Access Control and Inheritance:


A derived class can access all the non-private members of its base class. Thus base-class
members that should not be accessible to the member functions of derived classes should be
declared private in the base class.

A derived class inherits all base class methods with the following exceptions:

Constructors, destructors and copy constructors of the base class.

Overloaded operators of the base class.

Multi Level Inheritance


The inheritance can be of multiple levels and it is shown in the following example.

import [Link];

// Base class
class Shape
{
public:
void setWidth(int w)
{
width = w;
}
void setHeight(int h)
{
height = h;
}
protected:
int width;
int height;
}

// Derived class
class Rectangle: Shape
{
public:
int getArea()
{
return (width * height);
}
}

class Square: Rectangle


{
this(int side)
{
[Link](side);
[Link](side);
}
}

void main()
{
Square square = new Square(13);

// Print the area of the object.


writeln("Total area: ", [Link]());

}
When the above code is compiled and executed, it produces the following result:

Total area: 169


Loading [MathJax]/jax/output/HTML-CSS/[Link]

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