We have discussed in my previous post, what is Inheritance and its different types in C++, so today we are going to discuss about its third type, that is, Hierarchical Inheritance.
In Object Oriented Programming, the root meaning of inheritance is to establish a relationship between objects. In Inheritance, classes can inherit behavior and attributes from pre-existing classes, called Base Classes or Parent Classes.The resulting classes are known as derived classes or child classes.
There are 5 types of Inheritances used in C++:
There are 5 types of Inheritances used in C++:
1) Single Inheritance
2) Multilevel Inheritance
3) Hierarchial Inheritance
4) Hybrid Inheritance
5) Multiple Inheritance
So in Hierarchical Inheritance, we have 1 Parent Class and Multiple Child Classes, as shown in the pictorial representation given on this page, Inheritance. Many programming problems can be cast into a hierarchy where certain features of one level are shared by many others below that level. One example could be classification of accounts in a commercial bank or classification of students in a university.
In C++, such problems can be easily converted into hierarchies. The base class will include all the features that are common to the subclasses. A subclass can be constructed by inheriting the properties of the base class. A subclass can serve as a base class for the lower level classes and so on.
A derived class with hierarchical inheritance is declared as follows:
class A {.....}; // Base class
class B: public A {.....}; // B derived from A
class C: public A {.....}; // C derived from A
This process can be extended to any number of levels. Let us understand this concept by a simple C++ program:
C++ Program For Hierarchical Inheritance:
/* Double-Click To Select Code */
#include<iostream.h>
#include<conio.h>
class polygon
{
protected:
int width, height;
public:
void input(int x, int y)
{
width = x;
height = y;
}
};
class rectangle : public polygon
{
public:
int areaR ()
{
return (width * height);
}
};
class triangle : public polygon
{
public:
int areaT ()
{
return (width * height / 2);
}
};
void main ()
{
clrscr();
rectangle rect;
triangle tri;
rect.input(6,8);
tri.input(6,10);
cout <<"Area of Rectangle: "<<rect.areaR()<< endl;
cout <<"Area of Triangle: "<<tri.areaT()<< endl;
getch();
}
Program Output:
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