- What Is Inheritance? Inheritance is the mechanism of creating new classes from existing ones.
In object-oriented programming (OOP), inheritance is a mechanism that allows a class to inherit properties and behaviors from another class. It is a fundamental concept in OOP that promotes code reuse and establishes relationships between classes.
Inheritance is based on a hierarchical relationship between classes, where a derived class (also known as a subclass or child class) inherits the characteristics of a base class (also known as a superclass or parent class). The derived class extends the functionality of the base class by adding new features or overriding existing ones.
The key idea behind inheritance is that the derived class inherits all the attributes (data members) and behaviors (methods) of the base class, and it can also introduce its own specific attributes and behaviors. This allows for creating a hierarchy of classes with increasing specialization.