Extending an interface
with inheritance

You can easily add new method declarations to an interface by using inheritance, and you can also combine several interfaces into a new interface with inheritance. In both cases you get a new interface, as seen in this example:

//: c08:HorrorShow.java
// Extending an interface with inheritance.

interface Monster {
  void menace();
}

interface DangerousMonster extends Monster {
  void destroy();
}

interface Lethal {
  void kill();
}

class DragonZilla implements DangerousMonster {
  public void menace() {}
  public void destroy() {}
}

interface Vampire extends DangerousMonster, Lethal {
  void drinkBlood();
}

class VeryBadVampire implements Vampire {
  public void menace() {}
  public void destroy() {}
  public void kill() {}
  public void drinkBlood() {}
}

public class HorrorShow {
  static void u(Monster b) { b.menace(); }
  static void v(DangerousMonster d) {
    d.menace();
    d.destroy();
  }
  static void w(Lethal l) { l.kill(); }
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    DangerousMonster barney = new DragonZilla();
    u(barney);
    v(barney);
    Vampire vlad = new VeryBadVampire();
    u(vlad);
    v(vlad);
    w(vlad);
  }
} ///:~

DangerousMonster is a simple extension to Monster that produces a new interface. This is implemented in DragonZilla.

The syntax used in Vampire works only when inheriting interfaces. Normally, you can use extends with only a single class, but since an interface can be made from multiple other interfaces, extends can refer to multiple base interfaces when building a new interface. As you can see, the interface names are simply separated with commas.

Thinking in Java
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