Mastering Single Inheritance in Python: Explained with Real-World Examples

Introduction

In object-oriented programming, inheritance is a mechanism where a new class (called the child or subclass) is derived from an existing class (called the parent or superclass), inheriting all its properties and methods. Single inheritance is a type of inheritance where a subclass inherits properties and methods from a single parent class.

Python, being an object-oriented language, supports single inheritance. In this article, we will explore single inheritance in Python with several examples.

Example 1: Inheriting from a Parent Class

Let’s start with a simple example that demonstrates how to inherit from a parent class. Suppose we have a class Person that has two properties (name and age) and a method (print_info()) that prints the name and age of the person:

class Person:
    def __init__(self, name, age):
        self.name = name
        self.age = age

    def print_info(self):
        print(f"{self.name} is {self.age} years old")

Now, let’s create a class Student that inherits from Person and adds a new property (grade) and a new method (print_info()) that prints the name, age, and grade of the student: