Inheritance Chains
Having classes inherit from classes which may be inheriting from other classes, and so on and so forth, means you are dealing with an inheritance chain. The inheritance chain represents all the classes which are involved in the complete line of inheritance from the current class through all super classes up to the very first base class which, as it exists, marks the end of the chain and itself has no super class of its own (thereby not inheriting from anything else). This chain represents all which would be accessible to any derived subclass or instance of that subclass. Taxonomy or the science of organism classification, can help demonstrate this relationship.

Every known organism can classified through a hierarchy of identifying categories based on Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus and Species. Think about a brown pelican as an example. It is categorized in the following manner.

A brown pelican is considered a part of each one of these classifications with each one becoming more specific to what a brown pelican as you know it (if you know it) is. Most animals are Eukarya, fewer are Aves and fewer less are Pelecanus. With Aves and more so with Pelecanus, however, you are getting more specific to what a brown pelican really is. This often too is this the case with inheritance as your final subclass is a specific version of an inherited super class. That super class too could be a specific version of a yet less specific super class.

	Prev Page	Index	Next Page