Menu

Why Java doesn't support multiple inheritance?

Java doesn't support multiple inheritance because of deadlock and ambiguity situation.

A class cannot extend two classes, but a class can implement multiple interfaces. So, we use interfaces to achieve multiple inheritance in Java programming.

e.g. Class C extends A, B { //statements }

The above class declaration is invalid in Java programming. but possible in various other programming languages.

e.g. Class C extends A implements D, F { //codes }

The above class declaration is valid in Java. In the above class declaration, we have inherited class A and implementing two interfaces D and F. This way we can implement multiple interfaces in Java.

Example Class C extends Class A and Class B and both classes A and B have evaluate() method. When class C tries to inherit evaluate method then the compiler will get confused and unable to decide which evaluate method to inherit, either from class A or B. So to remove this ambiguity from the program Java doesn't support multiple inheritance.

7 comments: