Saturday, 12 September 2009

What is Abstract Class

Classes that cannot be instantiated. We cannot create an object from such a class for use in our program. We can use an abstract class as a base class, creating new classes that will inherit from it. Creating an abstract class with a certain minimum required level of functionality gives us a defined starting point from which we can derive non-abstract classes. An abstract class may contain abstract methods & non-abstract methods. When a class is derived fr om an abstract class, the derived class must implement all the abstract methods declared in the base class. We may use accessibility modifiers in an abstract class.An abstract class can inherit from a non-abstract class. In C++, this concept is known as pure virtual method.