Memberextends

Memberextends is a term used in some programming language documentation to describe the mechanism by which a type gains the members of another type. It is not a universally standardized keyword across languages, but it captures the common idea of extending or composing a set of members (methods, properties, and events) from one type into another. In practice, memberextends is realized through inheritance, mixins, traits, or extension interfaces, depending on the language.

In class-based languages, memberextends typically means that a derived class extends a base type, thereby inheriting its public and protected members. The derived class can reuse, override, or augment these members. In languages that support multiple inheritance, a type may extend members from more than one source, which can introduce ambiguity that must be resolved by the language’s method resolution order or explicit disambiguation rules.

In languages that use mixins or traits, memberextends is achieved by composing the member definitions of a mixin or trait into a host class. The host gains access to the mixin’s or trait’s members as if they were defined within the host itself, while still allowing conflicts and overrides to be managed by the language.

Key considerations include visibility of inherited members, how overrides are handled, and potential issues such as the diamond problem in multiple inheritance. Performance implications and versioning concerns can also arise when the set of extended members changes.

See also: inheritance, interface inheritance, mixins, traits, extension methods.