Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Note that, so far, the metaclass inheritance chain exactly follows that of the class inheritance chain. But the metaclass chain extends further because Object class is the subclass of Class. All metaclasses are subclasses of Class. In early Smalltalks, there was only one metaclass called Class.
Not all languages support multiple inheritance. For example, Java allows a class to implement multiple interfaces, but only inherit from one class. [22] If multiple inheritance is allowed, the hierarchy is a directed acyclic graph (or DAG for short), otherwise it is a tree. The hierarchy has classes as nodes and inheritance relationships as links.
In Python, everything is an object, even classes. Classes, as objects, have a class, which is known as their metaclass. Python also supports multiple inheritance and mixins. The language supports extensive introspection of types and classes. Types can be read and compared—types are instances of type. The attributes of an object can be ...
In class-based programming, inheritance is done by defining new classes as extensions of existing classes: the existing class is the parent class and the new class is the child class. If a child class has only one parent class, this is known as single inheritance , while if a child class can have more than one parent class, this is known as ...
Classes may inherit from other classes, so they are arranged in a hierarchy that represents "is-a-type-of" relationships. For example, class Employee might inherit from class Person. All the data and methods available to the parent class also appear in the child class with the same names.
The class A serves as a base class for the derived class B, which in turn serves as a base class for the derived class C. The class B is known as intermediate base class because it provides a link for the inheritance between A and C. The chain ABC is known as inheritance path. A derived class with multilevel inheritance is declared as follows:
The concept of class hierarchy in computer science is very similar to taxonomy, the classifications of species. The relationships are specified in the science of object-oriented design and object interface standards defined by popular use, language designers ( Java , C++ , Smalltalk , Visual Prolog ) and standards committees for software design ...
Inheritance, by contrast, typically targets the type rather than the instances, and is restricted to compile time. On the other hand, inheritance can be statically type-checked, while delegation generally cannot without generics (although a restricted version of delegation can be statically typesafe [7]). Delegation can be termed "run-time ...
