Yes — by using an abstract class a programmer can make all children of that class look alike in important ways.
Not everything defined in an abstract classes needs to be abstract.
The variable recipient
is defined in Card
and inherited in the usual way.
However, if a class contains even one abstract method, then
the class itself has to be declared to be abstract.
Here is a program to test the two classes.
abstract class Card { String recipient; public abstract void greeting(); } class Holiday extends Card { public Holiday( String r ) { recipient = r; } public void greeting() { System.out.println("Dear " + recipient + ",\n"); System.out.println("Season's Greetings!\n\n"); } } public class CardTester { public static void main ( String[] args ) { Holiday hol = new Holiday("Santa"); hol.greeting(); } }
This is a complete, runable program. The urge to copy it to NotePad and get it running must be irresistable. Remember to call the file "CardTester.java" .