Inheritance in C++

Need of Inheritance

Inheritance helps in representing

1.      Classes in hierarchy: well organized problem solution space.

2.      Extending existing classes thus promotes reuse.

3.      Reducing the duplication of efforts.

Types Inheritance in C++

1.      Singly Inheritance

2.      Multiple Inheritance

3.      Hierarchical Inheritance

4.      Multilevel Inheritance

5.      Hybrid Inheritance

      Singly Inheritance

It is the process of creating a new class from an existing base class. The existing class is known as the base class and the newly created class is called as a derived class.

In Singly Inheritance there is one base class and one derived class.

Singly Inheritance is the ability of a derived class to inherit the member functions and variables of the existing base class.

Multiple Inheritance

In the multiple inheritance there are more than one base class and one derived class.

Multiple inheritance can combine the behavior of multiple base classes in a single derived class. Multiple inheritance has many advantages over the single inheritance such as rich semantics and the ability to directly express complex structures. 

      Hierarchical Inheritance

When two or more classes derive from a single class, then inheritance is called the hierarchical inheritance.

Multilevel Inheritance 
C++ also provides the facility of multilevel inheritance, according to which the derived class can also be derived from another class, which in turn can further be inherited by another and so on.  

 

Hybrid Inheritance 
In this type of inheritance there is mixer of more than one type of inheritance.