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C# C# Objects Inheritance Inheritance in Code

If a change happens to the base class, do those the changes occur in the sub class as well?

So, let's say I have class Vertebrate and it's derived class Mammal. If I change something in Vertebrate, An example, "Vertebrate.HasBackBone = false;", does "Mammal.HasBackBone" become false too or does it remain true?

1 Answer

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,271 Points

I would say "yes", with qualifications:

Your examples don't seem to fit the question. For starters, if "Vertebrate" is a class, you would not be likely to write "Vertebrate.HasBackBone = false". You might have a class instance, for example named "animal", and you might write "animal.HasBackBone = false". But that would look the same whether "animal" was an instance of "Vertebrate" or if it was an instance of "Mammal".

Perhaps a better example would be adding a new field or property to the base class. So if you added a new property called "HasBrain" to the Vertebrate class, it would also be available in the Mammal class.