Inheritance: How do I bypass the immediate ancestor?

[Jacky Luk]

public class GenericForm
{
    List<String> hints = new ArrayList<>();
    protected void initComponents()
    {
    }
}

public class ViewCustomer extends GenericForm
{
    @override
    protected void initComponents()
    {
         hints.add("Customer");
         hints.add("View Customer");
         super.initComponents();
    }
}

public class EditCustomer extends ViewCustomer
{
    @override
    protected void initComponents()
    {
         hints.add("Customer");
         hints.add("Edit Customer");
         super.initComponents();
    }
}

I just can't directly inherit EditCustomer from GenericForm because
I need to carry on forward some of the functionality of ViewCustomer.
But When I am doing the above, the hints will be "accumulated" twice
ending up with 4 hints. How can I call initComponents of GenericForm
directly from EditCustomer and bypass ViewCustomer's initComponents()?
Thanks
Jack

[Stephan van Hulst]

Why not:

super.initComponents();
hints.add("Edit Customer");

When you override a method, you're stuck with it. You can not invoke a method of a grandparent, because it's overridden. That's kind of the definition of overriding.

P.S. @Override is with capital O.

[Jacky Luk]

Stephan van Hulst wrote:Why not:

super.initComponents();
hints.add("Edit Customer");

Hello Stephan,
The reason I couldn't do the way you described because
GenericForm's initComponents will do some processing with
the hints variable after someone
had added some strings into it.
Humm, I think that's why... may be some flaws
with my design.
Thanks
Jack

[Stephan van Hulst]

So split the initializing and the processing. Instances should never perform *any* work before being properly initialized.

Besides, superclasses should not need to know about what subclasses can do. Can you give us more detail about the purpose and working of the program?

[Jacky Luk]

I got it. What I am doing is to push some hints into the array,
and giving the user some hints which screen he/she is at the moment.
Thanks
Jack