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Cohoon/Davidson: C++ Program Design, Third Edition
C++ Program Design, 3/e
James P. Cohoon, University of Virginia
Jack W. Davidson, University of Virginia
Inheritance

Chapter 13 Overview

A key feature of an object-oriented language is inheritance. Inheritance is the ability to define new classes using existing classes as a basis. The new class inherits the attributes and behaviors of the classes on which it is based, and it can also have attributes and behaviors that are specific to it. Inheritance is a powerful mechanism that provides a natural framework for producing software that is reliable, understandable, cost-effective, adaptable, and reusable. In this chapter, we introduce C++’s inheritance mechanism by developing a class hierarchy for representing and displaying two-dimensional shapes. The resulting classes are used to refine and expand the kaleidoscope program developed in Chapter 7.








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