Polymorphism/Access to the super class method definition

Like any other object language, the sending of a message supports polymorphism. We are going to use the previous example to distinguish attributes from other features ("format" example).

Class:printFeature()

{

PartFeature.<print();

}

Feature:print()

{

// The current object is a Feature

StdOut.write("Feature : ", format(), NL);

}

String Feature:format()

{

return Name; // Very simple formatting...

}

String Attribute:format()

{

// The formatting consists in prefixing

// the name of '(Attribute) '

return "(Attribute) " + super.format;

}

The "super" pseudo-variable, used in the "format" method of Attribute, is used to send a message to the current object (here it is "format") defined in its parent class. This characteristic authorizes code factorization in the parent classes.