Object-Orientation FAQ

1.9) Does Multiple Inheritance Pose Any Additional Difficulties?

Yes, it does.  Any name can be simply resolved to a class member with single
inheritance by simply accessing the first name encountered for data members
and by accessing the first signature match (or ambiguity) encountered for
methods (at least one way, C++ hides some member functions).  Since several
distinct parents can declare a member within a multiple inheritance hierarchy,
which to choose becomes an issue.  Eiffel forces derived classes to rename
parent members that conflict.  Self prioritizes parents.  CLOS merges member
"slots" (instance variables) with the same name into a single slot, as did
the earlier flavors.  C++ declares an error iff a conflict arises, but a
class qualifier can be used to explicitly disambiguate.  Smalltalk renders
same names for instance variables of subclasses illegal.
On the other hand, multiple-inheritance can be seen as required for basic
object-oriented programming, because many objects in the real world belong to
several classes.  In classical systems without MI, a class which should inherit
from more than one class must textually include all but one of those classes in
its interface, causing code duplication (and a messy interface).

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