
442 Inheritance
11.1 INTRODUCTION
Inheritance is one of the most useful and essential characteristics of object-oriented programming.
The existing classes are the main components of
inheritance. The new classes are created from ex-
isting ones. The properties of the existing classes
are simply extended to the new classes. The new
classes created by using such a method are known
as derived classes, and the existing classes
are known as base classes, as shown in Figure
11.1. The relationship between the base and derived
classes is known as kind of relationship.
The programmer can define new member variables
and functions ...