Lecture

Inheritance in Object-Oriented Programming

Graph Chat

Chat with Graph Search

Ask any question about EPFL courses, lectures, exercises, research, news, etc. or try the example questions below.

DISCLAIMER: The Graph Chatbot is not programmed to provide explicit or categorical answers to your questions. Rather, it transforms your questions into API requests that are distributed across the various IT services officially administered by EPFL. Its purpose is solely to collect and recommend relevant references to content that you can explore to help you answer your questions.

Description

This lecture covers advanced topics related to inheritance in object-oriented programming, including encapsulation, abstraction, single/multiple inheritance, polymorphism, abstract/virtual classes, name collisions resolution, methods, constructors, destructors, access rights, and constructor chaining. The instructor discusses the relationship between classes, such as 'A is a B' and 'is-a' semantics, as well as the order of constructor/destructor calls. The lecture also delves into practical examples like modeling relationships between classes and implementing inheritance in C++. Additional concepts like private inheritance and protected inheritance are explored, along with the visibility restrictions and access levels in inherited members.

Official source

Ontological neighbourhood

Theoretical computer science

Programming language theory: High-level programming languages

Related concepts (32)

Inheritance (object-oriented programming)

In object-oriented programming, inheritance is the mechanism of basing an object or class upon another object (prototype-based inheritance) or class (class-based inheritance), retaining similar implementation. Also defined as deriving new classes (sub classes) from existing ones such as super class or base class and then forming them into a hierarchy of classes. In most class-based object-oriented languages like C++, an object created through inheritance, a "child object", acquires all the properties and behaviors of the "parent object", with the exception of: constructors, destructors, overloaded operators and friend functions of the base class.

Object-oriented programming

Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of "objects", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or properties), and the code is in the form of procedures (often known as methods). A common feature of objects is that procedures (or methods) are attached to them and can access and modify the object's data fields. In this brand of OOP, there is usually a special name such as or used to refer to the current object.

Interface (object-oriented programming)

In object-oriented programming, an interface or protocol type is a data type that acts as an abstraction of a class. It describes a set of method signatures, the implementations of which may be provided by multiple classes that are otherwise not necessarily related to each other. A class which provides the methods listed in a protocol is said to adopt the protocol, or to implement the interface. If objects are fully encapsulated then the protocol is the only way in which they may be accessed by other objects.

Class (computer programming)

In object-oriented programming, a class is an extensible program-code-template for creating objects, providing initial values for state (member variables) and implementations of behavior (member functions or methods). In many languages, the class name is used as the name for the class (the template itself), the name for the default constructor of the class (a subroutine that creates objects), and as the type of objects generated by instantiating the class; these distinct concepts are easily conflated.

Parametric polymorphism

In programming languages and type theory, parametric polymorphism allows a single piece of code to be given a "generic" type, using variables in place of actual types, and then instantiated with particular types as needed. Parametrically polymorphic functions and data types are sometimes called generic functions and generic datatypes, respectively, and they form the basis of generic programming. Parametric polymorphism may be contrasted with ad hoc polymorphism.

Related lectures (64)

Object-Oriented Programming: Fundamentals and Examples

Covers the fundamentals of Object-Oriented Programming in C++, including encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism, with examples in various OOP languages.

Object-Oriented Programming: Polymorphism and Pointers

Explores object-oriented programming concepts like polymorphism and pointers in C++.

Inheritance: Polymorphism & Casting

Covers inheritance, polymorphism, and casting in object-oriented programming, emphasizing code factorization and generic object manipulation.

Operator Overloading in C++

Explores operator overloading in C++, emphasizing internal and external overloads and their application to complex numbers.

Abstract Data Structures in C++