C++17 Quick Syntax Reference: A Pocket Guide to the Language, APIs and Library

© Mikael Olsson 2018

Mikael OlssonC++17 Quick Syntax Referencehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3600-0_14

14. Inheritance

Mikael Olsson¹ 

(1)

Hammarland, Finland

 

Inheritance allows a class to acquire the members of another class. In the following example, Square inherits from Rectangle. This is specified after the class name by using a colon followed by the public keyword and the name of the class to inherit from. Rectangle then becomes a base class of Square, which in turn becomes a derived class of Rectangle. In addition to its own members, Square gains all accessible members in Rectangle, except for its constructors and destructor.

class Rectangle

{

 public:

  int x, y;

  int getArea() { return x * y; }

};

class Square : public Rectangle {};

Upcasting ...