java类的多态,Java中的多态并从这些类创建对象

I'm a little confused exactly about how polymorphism and extending classes etc... works in Java when creating objects from these classes.

I recently had a problem which someone on here helped me resolved (see Not able to access object sub class's variable? (Java / Android)) for background.

I was attempting to create an object like so:

Quad hero = new Hero();

Where Hero was a subclass of Quad();

I had variables in my Hero class which I wasn't above to access.

The solution was to change my object creation to:

Hero hero = new Hero();

doing this, through my hero object, I was able to access all methods and variables in both my Quad and Hero classes.

My question now is - Why is this?

And with this in mind, when would it be useful to use my original method:

Quad hero = new Hero();

That one makes sense to me as Hero is also a quad. I've seen this type of declaration many times in Java code examples, and thought I understood, it but recent events have proved otherwise.

Would be grateful if someone could explain this for me - thanks

解决方案

Assume OtherHero is also a subclass from Quad with different behaviour:

This will work fine:

Quad hero = new Hero();

// some code

hero = new OtherHero();

Whereas the following won't compile:

Hero hero = new Hero();

// some code

hero = new OtherHero();

This doesn't seem to be useful. Now assume you have a method, that has Quad as return type. I'll write it in pseudocode:

Quad method() {

if (condition)

return new Hero();

else

return new OtherHero();

}

So you actually don't know if it will return a Hero or an OtherHero

Now, you can write:

Quad foo = method();

Now, you actually don't know the exact type of foo, but you can use it as Quad.

A popular example is java.util.List

You can write:

List list = Arrays.asList(1,2,3,4,5,6);

Collections.shuffle(list);

List is an interface, implemented by ArrayList, LinkedList and many other classes. Without knowing the code, we don't know which class exactly is returned by Arrays.asList(), but we can use it as a List.