Inheritance

Inheritance is a fundamental concept that Object-Oriented Programming is based on.

MSDN C# Inheritance Reference

"Inheritance enables you to create new classes that reuse, extend, and modify the behavior that is defined in other classes. The class whose members are inherited is called the base class, and the class that inherits those members is called the derived class. A derived class can have only one direct base class. However, inheritance is transitive. If ClassC is derived from ClassB, and ClassB is derived from ClassA, ClassC inherits the members declared in ClassB and ClassA."

"Conceptually, a derived class is a specialization of the base class. For example, if you have a base class Animal, you might have one derived class that is named Mammal and another derived class that is named Reptile. A Mammal is an Animal, and a Reptile is an Animal, but each derived class represents different specializations of the base class.

When you define a class to derive from another class, the derived class implicitly gains all the members of the base class, except for its constructors and destructors. The derived class can thereby reuse the code in the base class without having to re-implement it. In the derived class, you can add more members. In this manner, the derived class extends the functionality of the base class." MSDN C# Inheritance Reference

In C#, a derived (child) class can inherit from a base (parent) class. The C# syntax uses a colon : in the class definition to indicate a class, class MyChildClass: Parent where MyChildClass inherits from a ParentClass. In C#, the same colon syntax, : is used to indicate that a class is implementing an Interface. The convention is that all interface names should begin with the letter I. A child class can only inherit from a single base class. A C# class can implement any number of interfaces and these are a comma separated list, interface example syntax: class MyClass: IEnumerable, IEnumerator.

class MyChildClass: ParentClass { // class definition code }

Unity: MonoBehaviour

In order for a C# script to be attached to a game object as a component, the C# class must inherit from the Unity base class: MonoBehaviour.

``` class myScriptClass: MonoBehaviour{ //class definition code }

```

Since a C# class can only inherit from one base class, any Custom Script which functions as a Unity Component, to add behaviours to a GameObject, can not inherit from any other C# class.

Inheritance