Tribhuvan University
INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY(IOST)
Bachelor in Computer Science and Information Technology (B.SC CSIT)
VI Semester
NET Centric Computing(CSC-367 )
Unit-1.4: Inheritance and Polymorphism in C#
Instructor
Tekendra Nath Yogi
Tekendranath@gmail.com
Contents
• Introduction to Inheritance
• Types of Inheritance
• Use of “base” keyword
• Method hiding and overriding
• Applying polymorphism in code extensibility
• Abstract class
• Sealed class
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Introduction
• The mechanism of deriving a new class from an old one is called inheritance.
• The old class is referred to as the base, ancestor, parent or super class and the
new one is called the derived, descendent, child or sub class.
• Inheritance enables code reusability and the creation of a hierarchical
relationship between classes.
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Contd…,
• E.g.,
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Contd…,
• The derived class inherits some or all of the features from the base class and
can add new features of its own.
• In inheritance, private members of the base class can not be accessed by any of
the derived classes.
– It's only visible for parent class's methods and properties, even if they are inherited
• Derived class can not inherits
– Constructors, and destructors of the base class.
– Overloaded operators of the base class.
– Static members of the base class.
– Sealed class features.
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Contd…,
• The general form of a class declaration that inherits a base class is:
class base_class_name
// body of base class
class derived_class_name : base_class_name
// body of derived class
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Contd…,
• Example Program
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Type (Forms) of Inheritance
• A class can inherit properties from one or more classes and from one or more
levels.
• Based on the number of base classes and number of levels involved in the
inheritance can be categorized into the following forms:
– Single inheritance
– Multiple inheritance (via Interfaces. C# does not support multiple inheritance with classes)
– Hierarchical inheritance
– Multilevel inheritance
– Hybrid inheritance
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Single Inheritance
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Multi-Level Inheritance
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Hierarchical Inheritance
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Hybrid inheritance
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Access Specifiers and Inheritance
• A private class member will remain private to its class. It is not accessible to
any code outside its class, including derived classes.
• Solution: One is to use protected members. A second is to use public properties
to provide access to private data.
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Constructors in base and derived class
• In the inheritance hierarchy, both base class and derived class have their own
constructors.
• To construct the base class object only the base class constructor is used.
• To construct the derived class object the constructor for the base class
constructs the base class portion of the object, and the constructor for the
derived class constructs the derived class part.
• When both base and derived class has no user defined constructors then the
compile supply the default constructor to initialize the object.
• When a derived class has user defined constructor and base class no user
defined constructor then for derived class object construction derived class user
defined constructor is used along with the base class default constructor.
• When both the base and derived class have user defined constructors. Program
use base keyword to pass the parameter to the base class constructor.
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Contd…,
• Use of “base” keyword:
– The first use is to call a base class constructor.
– The second is to access a member of the base class that has been hidden by
a member of a derived class.
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Contd…,
• Calling Base Class Constructors:
– The general form of derived class constructor for this purpose is:
derived_class_constructor(parameter_list) : base(arg_list)
// body of constructor
– Here, arg_list specifies any arguments needed by the constructor in the base class.
• Order of execution of Constructor: in a class hierarchy, constructors are
called in order of derivation, from base class to derived class.
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Contd…,
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Contd…,
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Inheritance and Name Hiding:
• It is possible for a derived class to define a member (using new keyword) that
has the same name as a member in its base class.
• When this happens, the member in the base class is hidden within the derived
class.
• To Access a such Hidden Name in derived class use the base keyword as:
base.member;
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Contd…,
• Example program,
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Virtual Methods and Overriding –Run time polymorphism
• A virtual method is a method that is declared as virtual in a base class by using
virtual keyword.
• Method Overriding: Virtual methods defined in base class can be redefined in
one or more derived classes by using override keyword.
• Thus, each derived class can have its own version of a virtual method.
• Different versions of same method can be called by using single base class
reference.
• In this situation, C# determines which version of the method to call based upon
the type of the object referred to by the reference and this determination is
made at runtime.
• Thus, when different objects are referred to, different versions of the virtual
method are executed.
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Contd…,
class base_class Class OverrideDemo
{ {
//base class body Static void Main( )
public virtual type Method_Name(param_list)
{
{
//virtual method body base_class b= new base_class();
}
derived_class d= new derived_class();
}
base_class br;
class derived_class:base_class
br=b;
{
//derived class body br.Method_Name(param_list)
Public override type Method_Name(param_list)
br=d;
{
//virtual method body br.Method_Name(param_list);
} }
} }
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Using Abstract Classes
• A Class having one or more abstract methods is called abstract class. Abstract
method is a method without any implementation.
• Features of abstract class:
– One or more abstract methods
– Defined by using abstract keyword
– There can be no objects of an abstract class
– Non abstract derived class should implement the abstract class abstract methods.
• Features of abstract method:
– created by specifying the abstract type modifier
– An abstract method contains no body and is, therefore, not implemented by the base class.
Thus, a derived class must override it.
– an abstract method is automatically virtual, and there is no need to use the virtual modifier.
– The abstract modifier can be used only on instance methods. It cannot be applied to static
methods. Properties and indexers can also be abstract.
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Contd…,
class abstract base_class
{
// class body
Public abstract type Mehtod_name(param_List);
}
class derived_class: base_class
{
// derived class body
Public override type Mehtod_name(param_List)
{
// abstract method implementation
}
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Using sealed to Prevent Inheritance
• To prevent a class from being inherited, precede its declaration with sealed.
• Here is an example of a sealed class:
sealed class A
// ...
// The following class is illegal.
class B : A // ERROR! Can't derive from class A
{
// ...
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Contd…,
• sealed can also be used on virtual methods to prevent further overrides.
class B
{
public virtual void MyMethod() { /* ... */ }
}
class D : B
{
// This seals MyMethod() and prevents further overrides.
sealed public override void MyMethod() { /* ... */ }
}
class X : D
{
// Error! MyMethod() is sealed!
public override void MyMethod() { /* ... */ }
}
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The object class, boxing and unboxing
• C# defines one special class called object that is an implicit base class of all
other classes and for all other types (including the value types).
• This means that a reference variable of object type can refer to an object of any
other type.
• Process of using object class reference to refer to value type is called boxing.
• Unboxing is the process of retrieving a value from a boxed object. This action
is performed using an explicit cast from the object reference to its
corresponding value type.
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Contd…,
// A simple boxing/unboxing example.
using System;
class BoxingDemo
{
static void Main()
int x;
object obj;
x = 10;
obj = x; // boxing x into an object
int y = (int)obj; // unbox obj into an int
Console.WriteLine(y);
}
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Properties and Indexer in Inheritance
• Indexers in Inheritance
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Contd…,
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Contd…,
• Properties in inheritance
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Contd…,
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Thank You !
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