Constructors and Inheritance in Java

Question

Hi there,
I'm going over access modifiers in Java from this website and noticed that the following output is displayed if you run the snippet of code.
Cookie Class
import javax.swing.*;
public class Cookie {
     public Cookie() {
          System.out.println("Cookie constructor");
     protected void foo() {
          System.out.println("foo");
}ChocolateChip class
public class ChocolateChip extends Cookie {
     public ChocolateChip() {
          System.out.println("ChocolateChip constructor");
     public static void main(String[] args) {
          ChocolateChip x = new ChocolateChip();
          x.foo();
}Output:
Cookie constructor
ChocolateChip constructor
fooI've been told that constructors are never inherited in Java, so why is "Cookie constructor" still in the output? I know that ChocolateChip extends Cookie, but the Cookie constructor isn't enacted when the new ChocolateChip object is defined... or is it?
If you can shed any light on this, I would greatly appreciate it.
Many thanks!

Answer 1

896602 wrote:
I've been told that constructors are never inherited in JavaThat is correct. If they were inherited, that would mean that, just by virtue of Cookie having a c'tor with some particular signature, ChocoChip would also "automatically" have a c'tor with that same signature. However, that is not the case.
, so why is "Cookie constructor" still in the outputBecause invoking a constructor always invokes the parent class's c'tor before any of our own c'tor's body executes, unless the first statement is this(...), to invoke some other c'tor of ours. If this is the case, eventually down the line, some c'tor of ours will not have an explicit this(...) call. It will either have an explicit super(...) call, or no call at all, which ends up leading to the compiler generating a call to super().
Note that the ability to call super(...) does not mean that that c'tor was inherited.
I know that ChocolateChip extends Cookie, but the Cookie constructor isn't enacted when the new ChocolateChip object is defined... or is it?Yes, it is. As I pointed out above, if we don't explicitly call this(...) or super(...), then a call to super() is inserted by the compiler.