From: Clemens Hintze <c.hintze@...>
Date: 2000-12-29T09:10:02+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:8206] Re: Multiple Inheritance

>>>>> "Gregg" == Gregg T Geiger <gt.geiger@worldnet.att.net> writes:

    Gregg> Just looking to do something like 
    Gregg> 
    Gregg>   class Child < (Father, Mother)
    Gregg>   end

    Gregg> with Father and Mother having been previously defined.
    Gregg> Obviously the syntax is wrong, but is MI possible w/ Ruby?

Njet! Ruby do not feature MI *on*purpose*!

I guess, you do not really want to do it like shown in your example
above, do you? How could a Child being a Father *and* a Mother at the
same time? ;-)

I will not going so far to say that MI is absolutely unnecessary, but
most of the time MI is mis-used to *not* building a true IS_A
relationship, but to do something I would call feature inheritance. 
There, a Child would not *being* a Father *and* a Mother, but getting
all features of them. 

Some languages like C++ have no other choice to express feature
inheritance. But in Ruby you can do such feature inheritance via
Modules. A class may 'include' several Modules at the same time. A
much more cleaner way, IMHO!

    Gregg> Thanks.

HTH,
\cle