Inheritance

Inheritance is one of the most important features of the .NET Framework. A class can inherit or derive from another class, which means that the new class can have all of its properties, methods, and members exposed by the first class, which is called the base class. The new class can then define its own members. Inherited members can then be overridden to adapt their behavior to the new class’s context. The .NET Framework provides single-level inheritance, which means a class can inherit from one other class at a time.

Each class derives implicitly from System.Object, and the Inherits keyword is used to inherit classes. The following code provides an example of a base class named Person and a derived class named Customer:

Get Visual Basic 2015 Unleashed now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.