Inheritance
Inheritance allows the combination of one or more classes. Let's look at an example of inheritance:
class Vehicle {
public:
TankLevel getTankLevel() const;
void turnOn();
};
class Car : public Vehicle {
public:
bool isTrunkOpen();
};
In this example, the Car class inherits from the Vehicle class, or, we can say Car derives from Vehicle. In C++ terminology, Vehicle is the base class, and Car is the derived class.
When defining a class, we can specify the classes it derives from by appending :, followed by one or more classes, separated by a comma:
class Car : public Vehicle, public Transport {
}
When specifying the list of classes to derive from, we can also specify the visibility of the inheritance – private, protected, or public.
The visibility modifier specifies who can know about the inheritance relationship between the classes.
The methods of the base class can be accessed as methods...
