inheritance in object oriented programming is where a new class is formed using classes which have allready been defined. These classes have have some of the behavior and attributes which where existent in the classes that it inherited from. The peropos of inheritance in object oriented programming is to minimize the reuse of existing code without modification.

Inheritance allowes classes to be categorized, similer to the way humans catagorize. It also provides a way to generalize du to the "is a" relationship between classes. For example a "cow" is a generalization of "animal" similarly so are "pigs" & cheaters". Defeining classes in this way, allows us to define attributes and behaviours which are commen to all animals in one class, so cheaters would natuarly inheart properities commen to all animals.

The advantage of inheritance is that classes which would otherwise have alot of similar code , can instead shair the same code, thus reducing the complexity of the program. Inheritance, therefore, can also be refered to as polymorphism which is where many pieces of code are controled by shared control code.

Inheritance can be accomplished by overriding methods in its ancestor, or by adding new methods.