Question

I have these 4 java clases:
1

public class Rect {
    double width;
    double height;
    String color;

    public Rect( ) {
        width=0;
        height=0;
        color="transparent";      
    }

    public Rect( double w,double h) {
        width=w;
        height=h;
        color="transparent";
    }

    double area()
    {
        return  width*height;
    } 
}

2

public class PRect extends Rect{
    double depth;

    public PRect(double w, double h ,double d) {
        width=w;
        height=h;
        depth=d;
    }

    double area()
    {
        return  width*height*depth;
    }     
}

3

public class CRect extends Rect{ 
    String color;

    public CRect(double w, double h ,String c) {
        width=w;
        height=h;
        color=c;
    }

    double area()
    {
        return  width*height;
    }     
}

4

public class test {

    public test() { }

    public static void main(String[] args) {  
        Rect r1=new Rect(2,3);
        System.out.println("area of r1="+r1.area());

        PRect pr1=new PRect(2,3,4);
        System.out.println("area of pr1="+pr1.area());


        CRect cr1=new CRect(2,3,"RED");
        System.out.println("area of cr1="+cr1.area()+"  color = "+cr1.color);


        System.out.println("\n POLY_MORPHISM ");
        Rect r2=new Rect(1,2);
        System.out.println("area of r2="+r2.area());

        Rect pr2=new PRect(1,2,4);
        System.out.println("area of pr2="+pr2.area());


        Rect cr2=new CRect(1,2,"Blue");
        System.out.println("area of cr2="+cr2.area()+"  color = "+cr2.color); 

    }
}

I got the output:

area of r1=6.0
area of pr1=24.0
area of cr1=6.0  color = RED
POLY_MORPHISM 
area of r2=2.0
area of pr2=8.0
area of cr2=2.0  color = transparent***

why consider cr2 as Rect(super class) and with “transparent” color not as CRect (sub class) with “Blue” color ?

Answer 1

This is one of the problems of using visible fields – you end up using them…

You’ve got a color field in both Rect and CRect. Fields are not polymorphic, so when you use cr2.color, that uses the field declared in Rect, which is always set to "transparent".

Your CRect class should not have its own color field – it should supply the colour to the superclass constructor. It makes no sense for a single rectangle to have two different color fields – it could have borderColor and fillColor, of course – but just color is too ambiguous…