In this tutorial we, are going to learn Inheritance concept.

Inheritance is an important concept in object-oriented programming (OOP) that allows you to create new classes (derived classes) based on existing classes (base or parent classes). It is a way to establish a hierarchical relationship between classes, where the derived classes inherit the properties and behaviors of the base class.

The class from which a new class inherits is called the “base class” or “superclass,” and the class that inherits from the base class is called the “derived class” or “subclass.” Inheritance facilitates code reuse and the creation of hierarchical relationships between classes.

To define a class that inherits from another class, you specify the base class name in parentheses after the subclass name in the class definition. Here’s a basic syntax example

In Python, you can implement inheritance using the following syntax:

class BaseClass:
    # Base class attributes and methods

class DerivedClass(BaseClass):
    # Derived class attributes and methods

Here, DerivedClass is the derived class that inherits from BaseClass. The derived class inherits all the attributes (variables) and methods (functions) from the base class. It can also add new attributes or override existing methods from the base class to customize its behavior.

Let’s see an example:

class Animal:
    def __init__(self, name):
        self.name = name

    def speak(self):
        print("Animal speaks.")

class Dog(Animal):
    def __init__(self, name):
        super().__init__(name)

    def speak(self):
        print("Dog barks.")

class Cat(Animal):
    def __init__(self, name):
        super().__init__(name)

    def speak(self):
        print("Cat meows.")

# Creating instances of derived classes
dog = Dog("Buddy")
dog.speak()  # Output: Dog barks.

cat = Cat("Whiskers")
cat.speak()  # Output: Cat meows.

In this example, we have a base class Animal that has an attribute name and a method speak(). The derived classes Dog and Cat inherit from Animal. They both have their own __init__ method to initialize the name attribute, and they override the speak() method to provide their specific behavior.

When we create instances of Dog and Cat and call their speak() method, the appropriate implementation of the method in the derived class is executed.

Inheritance helps in code reuse, as you can define common attributes and methods in the base class and then extend or specialize them in the derived classes as needed. It promotes code organization, modularity, and flexibility in your program’s design.