In computer science, a superclass is a class from which other classes are derived. A superclass is also called a parent class or base class. The classes that are derived from a superclass are known as child classes, derived classes, or subclasses. We can also say that a class A extends class B when A is a subclass of B. Computer science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems. ... In object-oriented programming, classes are used to group related variables and functions. ... In object-oriented programming, a subclass is a class that inherits some properties from its superclass. ...

A superclass allows for a generic interface to specialized functionality through the use of virtual functions. This article or section should be merged with Virtual method In many object oriented programming languages such as C++, C#, VB.NET, a virtual function is a function that can be overridden with specialized implementations in subclasses. ...

The superclass mechanism is extensively used in object oriented programming due to the reusability that can be achieved: common features are incapsulated in modular objects. Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a computer programming paradigm in which a software system is modeled as a set of objects that interact with each other. ... In computer science and software engineering, reusability is the likelihood a segment of structured code can be used again to add new functionalities with slight or no modification. ...

in UML, class extensions (subclassing) is represented as follows: Media:superclass.png In software engineering, Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a non-proprietary, third generation modeling and specification language. ...