Why inheritance is used in C++ - See It in Action

Why inheritance is used

📖 Scenario: Imagine you are creating a program for a vehicle rental company. They have different types of vehicles like cars and trucks. Many vehicles share common features like having wheels and an engine, but some have special features too.

🎯 Goal: You will create a simple example using inheritance in C++ to show how common features can be shared and special features can be added. This will help you understand why inheritance is used.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a base class called Vehicle with a function startEngine()

Create a derived class called Car that inherits from Vehicle

Add a function openTrunk() to the Car class

Create an object of Car and call both startEngine() and openTrunk()

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Inheritance is used in software to model real-world relationships, like different types of vehicles sharing common features.

💼 Career

Understanding inheritance is key for software developers to write clean, reusable, and organized code in many programming languages.

1

Create the base class Vehicle

Write a class called Vehicle with a public function startEngine() that prints "Engine started".

C++

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use class Vehicle { public: void startEngine() { ... } }; and std::cout to print.

2

Create the derived class Car

Create a class called Car that inherits from Vehicle. Add a public function openTrunk() that prints "Trunk opened".

C++

class Vehicle {
public:
    void startEngine() {
        std::cout << "Engine started" << std::endl;
    }
};

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use class Car : public Vehicle and add void openTrunk() inside.

3

Create a Car object and use its functions

Create an object called myCar of type Car. Call myCar.startEngine() and myCar.openTrunk().

C++

class Vehicle {
public:
    void startEngine() {
        std::cout << "Engine started" << std::endl;
    }
};

class Car : public Vehicle {
public:
    void openTrunk() {
        std::cout << "Trunk opened" << std::endl;
    }
};

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Inside main(), create Car myCar; and call the two functions.

4

Run the program and see the output

Run the program and print the output of calling myCar.startEngine() and myCar.openTrunk().

C++

#include 

class Vehicle {
public:
    void startEngine() {
        std::cout << "Engine started" << std::endl;
    }
};

class Car : public Vehicle {
public:
    void openTrunk() {
        std::cout << "Trunk opened" << std::endl;
    }
};

int main() {
    Car myCar;
    myCar.startEngine();
    myCar.openTrunk();
    return 0;
}

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Check the console output shows both lines exactly.