Interface inheritance allows classes to inherit specific functions from interfaces, ensuring required behaviors and adding complex functionality without complicated inheritance issues. Objects can be used in a generic sense, allowing for flexibility in parameter usage.
Interface inheritance is a mechanism in some computer languages where specific functions are inherited from a class and therefore that particular class must provide implementations for those functions in order to be complete. Interfaces exist only in some object-oriented programming languages. They can be used to emulate multiple inheritance while not actually allowing a class to multiply to inherit, because there is generally no limit to how many interfaces a class can inherit from. In addition to unimplemented methods, interfaces can also include public constants.
In interface inheritance, the object that inherits the method’s stubs and constants is considered a type of interface object. Thus, if a class X inherited from an interface Y, any instance of class X would also be an instance of class Y. This becomes more complicated when a class’s interface inheritance involves more than one separate interface. For each additional interface inherited, the resulting class can legitimately be used as an instance of each. If a class inherited ten different interfaces, objects of that class could be used as an instance of eleven different objects, including itself.
Such a complex legacy is often not needed. Interface inheritance is used to ensure that a class has a specific set of required behaviors, and these behaviors allow it to perform a variety of functions it otherwise could not perform. A common example of this is the ActionListener interface in Java, which requires a class to implement only a specific method. Proper implementation of this method allows a user to control buttons, menu items, or any other window object in the class if desired. Interface inheritance is a relatively simple way to add complex functionality to a class without worrying about the more complicated inheritance issues.
One of the biggest benefits of using interface inheritance is that it allows you to use specific objects in a generic sense. Since a class implementing an interface is an instance of that interface, it can be used wherever an instance of that interface is required. For example, if class A implements class C and class B also implements class C, if a method takes an instance of class C as a parameter, an instance of class A or an instance of class B would be a parameter acceptable to use. Interfaces can’t be instantiated by themselves because they aren’t complete, so there would never be an object that was purely an instance of class C as a parameter.
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