Basics of C++ Inheritance: How Subclasses Inherit Members from Parent Classes

C++ inheritance is a crucial feature of object-oriented programming, enabling derived classes (subclasses) to reuse members from base classes (parent classes), thus achieving code reuse and functional extension. For example, the "Animal" class contains general behaviors (eat, sleep), and its subclass "Dog" inherits members like name and age while adding a new bark method. Member variables and functions have different inheritance access rights: public members of the base class are directly accessible by the subclass, private members require indirect manipulation through the base class's public interfaces, and protected members are only accessible to the subclass and its subclasses. C++ supports three inheritance methods; in the most commonly used public inheritance, the access rights of the base class's public/protected members remain unchanged, while private members are invisible. The subclass constructor must call the base class constructor through an initialization list to ensure the base class portion is initialized first. The core of inheritance lies in reusing general code, extending functionality, and maintaining encapsulation (via indirect access to private members).