Simple Inheritance Question

[Nicholas d'Hondt]

So I'm just a little unclear about this, but how would I call methods from the 'top' of an inheritance chain? I say 'top' because Object is the top

E.g.:

public class AClass {
    public void myMethod() { ... }
}

public class BClass extends AClass {
    public void myMethod() { ... }
}

public class CClass extends AClass {
    public void myMethod() { ... }
}

Assuming that BClass.myMethod() completely overrides AClass.myMethod() (so that there is no call to super.myMethod() in BClass.myMethod()) How can I call AClass.myMethod() from CClass.myMethod()?

[Paul Clapham]

The answer: You can't call that method directly from your CClass class. That's the inheritance part of the question; a class only knows about the class it extends and not about anything higher in the inheritance chain.

From the design point of view: if you need to call AClass.myMethod from CClass, that means your inheritance hierarchy is designed incorrectly.

[Nicholas d'Hondt]

Thanks, that's what I assumed, but I wanted to make sure.

[Campbell Ritchie]

You can use super.myMethod() as part of the method in the subclass. It is a lot easier to understand if the method returns something

@Override
public String toString()
{
   return super.toString() + ...
}