Inheritance is a fundamental concept in object-oriented programming that allows one class to inherit the fields and methods of another class. This promotes code reuse and establishes a natural hierarchy between classes. The class that inherits is called a subclass (or derived class), and the class being inherited from is called a superclass (or base class).

Example Code

// Superclass
class Animal {
    void eat() {
        System.out.println("This animal eats food.");
    }
}

// Subclass
class Dog extends Animal {
    void bark() {
        System.out.println("The dog barks.");
    }
}

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Dog myDog = new Dog();
        myDog.eat(); // Inherited method
        myDog.bark(); // Subclass method
    }
}

In this example:

• Animal is the superclass with a method eat.
• Dog is the subclass that inherits from Animal and also has its own method bark.
• The Dog object myDog can call both the inherited eat method and its own bark method.