Is inheritance is necessary to override?

[Anu satya]

Hi,
I had been to one interview. There i have been asked two questions.

1. Is inheritance is necessary to override?
2. Under what condition a class is made protected?

My answer was:
1. Inheritance is necessary to override.
2. When we need to restrict only a child class to access its super class's data, at time, it is a good idea to make a class protected.

But interviewers were not happy with my answers. I couldn't clear the interview.

Can anyone please help me where am i wrong and why?

[Seetharaman Venkatasamy]

you cant declare a top level class as protected. only default
(package-private) and public is allowed

hth

[Nick Puketza]

Hi Anu,

Regarding the first question, I have two quotations from the K&B
SCJP 6 Study Guide:

- "Instance methods can be overridden only if they are inherited by
the subclass."

- "If a method can't be inherited, you cannot override it. Remember that
overriding implies that you're reimplementing a method you inherited!"

So your answer to that question seems to be correct.

[Anu satya]

Thank you Nick Puketza and Seetharaman.

According to Nick, i understand that Overriding and Inheritance are related to each other like try-catch block...so, we can't use either of the two. We have to use both. Am i correct? I am bit confussed.

Is it possible to override a constructor?

According to Seetharaman,

What if a class is not the top most class, under what circumstances we can make it protected? is my answer for this is correct? else is there any other answer with respect to design aspects?

Please help me....

One more request..... Nick, can you please send me the link to K&B SCJP 6 Study Guide ? I am planning to take up the exam.

Please

[Nick Puketza]

Hi Anu,

According to Nick, i understand that Overriding and Inheritance are related to each other like try-catch block...so, we can't use either of the two. We have to use both. Am i correct? I am bit confussed.

First, I think I might have confused you. If so, I'm sorry about that! You can use inheritance
without overriding. For example, you might create an application with two classes, a
superclass and a subclass, in which the subclass inherits all of the superclass methods,
and does not override any of them. (In the subclass you might declare several new
methods, too.)

However, I believe (based on my earlier post) that you cannot override a method unless
it is inherited.

Is it possible to override a constructor?

Constructors cannot be overridden.

One more request..... Nick, can you please send me the link to K&B SCJP 6 Study Guide ? I am planning to take up the exam.

Here is an Amazon link:

http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0071591060/ca0cc-20


Good luck, Anu!
- Nick

[Campbell Ritchie]

Remember only instance methods can be overridden. Not static methods, nor fields.

[Anu satya]

Good luck, Anu!
- Nick

Thank you very much Nick for your answers and help....