Type of inheritance

Answer 1

There are 2 Types of genetic Inheritance.

1. Polygenic inheritance, also known as quantitative or multi-factorial inheritance refers to inheritance of a phenotypic characteristic (trait) that is attributable to two or more genes and their interaction with the environment.

Polygenic traits do not follow patterns of Mendelian inheritance (qualitative traits). Instead, their phenotypes typically vary along a continuous gradient depicted by a bell curve. Eye color and skin color are both polygenetic traits.

2. Monogenic inheritance is controlled by a single gene, as opposed to multigenic.

Answer 2

They can be specified as Single Inheritance & Multi level Inheritance. The example discussed in the previous page is Single Inheritance where the features of one class are inherited by another class. Multi level inheritance is when there are classes extending one another in a chain format. Ex: Class A extends Class B, Class B extends Class C and so on

Answer 3

Types of InheritanceThere exists basically three types of inheritance

1. Multilevel inheritance
2. Multiple inheritance
3. Hierarchical inheritance

In single inheritance, one class extends one class only. In multilevel inheritance, the ladder of single inheritance increases. In multiple inheritance, one class directly extends more than one class and in hierarchical inheritance one class is extended by more than one class. Let us go in detail programmatically.

1. Multilevel Inheritance

In multilevel, one-to-one ladder increases. Multiple classes are involved in inheritance, but one class extends only one. The lowermost subclass can make use of all its super classes' members. Multilevel inheritance is an indirect way of implementing multiple inheritance. Following program explains.

2. Multiple Inheritance

In multiple inheritance, one class extends multiple classes. Java does not support multiple inheritance but C++ supports. The above program can be modified to illustrate multiple inheritance. The following program does not work.

3. Hierarchical Inheritance

In hierarchical type of inheritance, one class is extended by many subclasses. It is one-to-many relationship. A realtime example is available at dynamic binding.

Biswajit Das,

Answer 4

They can be specified as Single Inheritance & Multi level Inheritance. The example discussed in the previous page is Single Inheritance where the features of one class are inherited by another class. Multi level inheritance is when there are classes extending one another in a chain format. Ex: Class A extends Class B, Class B extends Class C and so on… There is one another form of inheritance called Multiple Inheritance. This is not supported by Java. The authors of the Java language took a design decision to compromise multiple inheritance with interfaces, the specifics of this decision may be covered in other sources. Practically, multiple inheritance is difficult because of the ambiguities it can create when a class inherits from two superclasses with the same method signature: which version should be called? But there is a workaround for this problem. Java allows us to achieve partial multiple inheritance using interfaces. A class can implement any number of interfaces and provide implementations for them and achieve partial multiple inheritance.

Answer 5

Types of Inheritance:

1. Single Inheritance

A Scenario where one class is inheriting/extending the behavior of just one super class.

Ex: public class Ferrari extends Car {…}

2. Multilevel Inheritance

A Scenario where one class is inheriting/extending the bahavior of another class which in turn is inheriting behavior from yet another class.

Ex: public class Automobile {…}

Public class Car extends Automobile {…}

Public class Ferrari extends Car {…}

This multilevel inheritance actually has no limitations on the number of levels it can go. So as far as java goes, it is limitless. But for maintenance and ease of use sakes it is better to keep the inheritance levels to a single digit number.

3. Multiple Inheritance

Actually, java does not support multiple inheritance. You can achieve partial multiple inheritance using interfaces but java is not like C or C++ where you can do direct multiple inheritance. However, you can achieve partial multiple inheritance with the help of interfaces.

Ex: public class FerrariF12011 extends Ferrari implements Car, Automobile {…}

And this is under the assumption that Car and Automobile are interfaces.

Here if you see, though you don't inherit concrete code from the Car or the Automobile interface, you do inherit skeleton methods that determine the way your class eventually behaves and hence this can be considered partial Multiple Inheritance.

4. Hybrid Inheritance

This is the scenario wherein your java code exhibits traits of more than one of the inheritance types explained above. Going with the example above again:

Public class FerrariF12011 extends Ferrari implements Car, Automobile {…}

The above is a combination of both single and multiple inheritance.

Answer 6

There are many varieties of inheritance that are available

• Single Inheritance
• Multi-Level Inheritance
• Multiple Inheritance and
• Hybrid Inheritance - A combination of one or more of the above types