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Multiple inheritance is an object-oriented term indicating the ability
of a child class to use or "inherit" functionality of multiple parent
classes.
In the C++ programming language, this concept is expressed in class "AChild", as follows:
class Parent1 {...};
class Parent2 {...};
class AChild : public Parent1, public Parent2 {...};
The Java programming language does not support the concept of multiple inheritance of classes, but it does support the concept of multiple interface inheritance.
Let's take a look at a simple example of multiple interface inheritance using the Java programming language.
First, we define the first parent interface:
public interface Parent1
{
public void sayHello();
}
Now, we define the second parent interface:
public interface Parent2
{
public void sayGoodbye();
}
Now, we define a child interface which inherits from both parent interface, using the "extends" keyword:
public interface AChild extends Parent1, Parent2
{
}
With these definitions in place, a class that implements the AChild interface will be required to implement the sayHello method and the sayGoodbye method.
This was first published in July 2004
