VB.NET Language in a Nutshell, Second Edition

Name

Inherits Statement

Syntax

Inherits classname

classname (required; String literal)

The name of the inherited (base) class

Description

Specifies the name of the class that is being inherited, that is, the base class. The statement can appear immediately after the Class statement or the Interface statement.

Rules at a Glance

• The Inherits statement must be the first line of code in the class module. It can be preceeded only by blank lines or comments. For example:

  Public Class CDerivedClass
     Inherits CBaseClass
     ...

• VB.NET supports single code-based inheritance only. That is, there can be only a single Inherits statement in any class module.

• If the Inherits statement is used to define the interfaces inherited by an interface, multiple interfaces can be listed, with a comma used to delimit them. For example:

           Interface IPerson
              Property Name As String
           End Interface
  
           Interface IEmployee
              Property SSN As String
           End Interface
  
           Interface ISalaried
              Inherits IPerson, IEmployee
  
              Property Salaried As Boolean
              Property Salary As Decimal
           End Interface

Programming Tips and Gotchas

The Inherits statement implements code inheritance. You can also use the Implements statement to implement interface inheritance. In that case, a class can be derived from more than one virtual base class. (In other words, you can effectively implement multiple inheritance through interface inheritance using the Implements statement.)

See Also

Class Statement, Interface Statement