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An inherited virtual method can be overridden by every class that inherits it, resulting in potentially many differentoverridden versions of a given method in a class hierarchy.

Listing 3 . Definition of class C.

class C : B { public override String ToString() {return "ToString in class C"; }//end overridden ToString()}//end class B

Behavior of overridden version

The behavior of this overridden version of the method is similar to, but different from the overridden version in the class B.

In this case, the method returns a reference to a String object that can be used to confirm that this overridden version of the methodhas been executed.

The driver class

Listing 4 shows the beginning of the driver class named Polymorph04 .

Listing 4 . Beginning of the driver class.

public class Polymorph04 { public static void Main() {Object varA = new A(); String v1 = varA.ToString();Console.WriteLine(v1);

A new object of the class A

The Main method of the driver class begins by instantiating a new object of the class A, and saving the object's reference in a reference variable of type Object , named varA .

It is very important to note that even though the object was instantiated from the class named A , the reference was saved as type Object , not type A.

Call ToString method on the reference

Then the code in Listing 4 calls the ToString method on the reference variable named varA , saving the returned reference to the String object in a reference variable of type String named v1 .

Display the returned String

Finally, that reference is passed to the WriteLine method, causing the String returned by the ToString method to be displayed on the computer screen. This causes the text shown in Figure 1 to be displayed.

Figure 1 . Text output for ToString method and class A.

A

Default ToString behavior

What you are seeing here is the String produced by the default version of the ToString method, as defined by the class named Object . The default implementation of the ToString method returns the fully qualified name of the type of the object. In this case, the object was instantiated from the class named A (so the type of the object is A ) .

Class A does not override ToString

Recall that our new class named A does not override the ToString method. Therefore, when the ToString method is called on a reference to an object of the class A, the default version of the method is executed, producing the output shown in Figure 1 .

A new object of the class B

Now consider the code shown in Listing 5 , which instantiates a new object of the class named B , and stores the object's reference in a reference variable of type Object .

Listing 5 . A new object of the class B.

Object varB = new B(); String v2 = varB.ToString();Console.WriteLine(v2);

Call ToString and display the result

The code in Listing 5 calls the ToString method on the reference of type Object , saving the returned reference in the reference variable named v2 . (Recall that the ToString method is overridden in the class named B .)

As before, the reference is passed to the WriteLine method, which causes the text shown in Figure 2 to be displayed on the computer screen.

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Source:  OpenStax, Xna game studio. OpenStax CNX. Feb 28, 2014 Download for free at https://legacy.cnx.org/content/col11634/1.6
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