Extending classes and overriding methods

Question

If I have a class which extends another, and overrides some methods, if I from a third class casts the extending class as the super class and calls one of the methods which gets overrided, is it the overrided method or the method of the superclass which get executed?
Stig.

Answer 1

Explicit cast can't enable the object to invoke super-class's method. Because dynamic binding is decided by the instance. The cast can just prevent you from using methods only defined in sub-class, but it does not let the object to use super-class's method, if the method's been overrided. Otherwise, the polymophism, which is one of the most beautiful feature of Object-Oriented thing, can't be achieved. As far as I know, the only way to use super-class's method is the super keyword in the sub-class, and seems no way for an object to do the same thing (I may wrong, since I haven't read the language spec).
here's a small test:
public class Test {
public static void main(String[] args){
A a = new B();
a.method();
((A)a).method();
class A{
public void method(){
System.out.println("A's method");
class B extends A{
public void method(){
System.out.println("B's method");
The output is:
B's method
B's method