Question

I am studying overriding member functions in Java and thought about experimenting with overriding member variables.

So, I defined classes

public class A{
    public int intVal = 1;
    public void identifyClass()
    {
        System.out.println("I am class A");
    }
}

public class B extends A
{
    public int intVal = 2;
    public void identifyClass()
    {
        System.out.println("I am class B");
    }
}

public class mainClass
{
    public static void main(String [] args)
    {
        A a = new A();
        B b = new B();
        A aRef;
        aRef = a;
        System.out.println(aRef.intVal);
        aRef.identifyClass();
        aRef = b;
        System.out.println(aRef.intVal);
        aRef.identifyClass();
    }
}

The output is:

1
I am class A
1
I am class B

I am not able to understand why when aRef is set to b intVal is still of class A?

Answer 1

When you make a variable of the same name in a subclass, that’s called hiding. The resulting subclass will now have both properties. You can access the one from the superclass with super.var or ((SuperClass)this).var. The variables don’t even have to be of the same type; they are just two variables sharing a name, much like two overloaded methods.