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Inheritance is an object oriented feature supported by Java wherein the features of one Java class can be inherited/made available in another class. This creates a parent child relationship between these 2 classes. Class Inheritance in java mechanism is used to build new classes from existing classes. The inheritance relationship is transitive: if class x extends class y, then a class z, which extends class x, will also inherit from class y. Object-oriented programming allows classes to inherit commonly used state and behavior from other classes.

Example:

public class Parent {

private String name = "Rocky";

public String getName(){

return this.name;

}

}

public class Child extends Parent {

public static void main(String[] args){

System.out.println("Name in Parent is: " + getName());

}

}

Here the getName() method is available only in the parent class but is directly used in the child class because the method is public and is directly accessible to the child class since it has extended the parent class.

Benefits of Inheritance:

One of the key benefits of inheritance is to minimise the amount of duplicate code in an application by sharing common code amongst several subclasses. Where equivalent code exists in two related classes, the hierarchy can usually be refactored to move the common code up to a mutual superclass. This also tends to result in a better organisation of code and smaller, simpler compilation units.

Inheritance can also make application code more flexible to change because classes that inherit from a common superclass can be used interchangeably. If the return type of a method is superclass

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16y ago

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