Techopedia Explains Inheritance
C# does not support multiple inheritance, which means a class can derive from one base class only, although a class can be derived from one or more interfaces. Due to the transitive nature of inheritance, a derived class inherits all the members of its ancestors.
For example, classes, Car and Bus can be derived from a base class, Vehicle, through inheritance because both Car and Bus are types of Vehicle.
The main features of inheritance include:
- All the members of the base class except those with private accessibility can be accessed in the derived class.
- All the members of the base class are inherited from the base class except constructors and destructors.
- Unlike in C++, the virtual methods in a derived class need to use the modifier "override" to override an inherited member.
- To hide an inherited member with the same name and signature in the derived class, the "new" modifier can be used.
- To prevent direct instantiation of a class, the "abstract" modifier can be used.
- To prevent further derivation of a base class, it can be declared using "sealed" modifier.
Inheritance provides the following benefits:
- It enables the construction of a hierarchy of related classes that can reuse, extend and alter the behaviors defined in the existing classes.
- It allows code reuse, reducing time and effort in coding and testing.
- It helps improve modularity and performance by dividing large pieces of code into smaller, more manageable, pieces.
- It forms the means to achieve polymorphism, which allows an object to represent more than one type.
