Inheritance is the process by which one class inherits properties and behaviors from another class. This allows you to create more specialized classes that share common properties and behaviors with their parent class. For example, you could create a SportsCar class that inherits properties and behaviors from the Car class, but also has additional properties and behaviors specific to sports cars.

This is the most common type of inheritance in Java. It involves creating a new class that inherits from a single parent class. The child class can access all the attributes and methods of the parent class and can also add its own unique attributes and methods.

This type of inheritance involves creating a new class that inherits from a child class. The child class, in turn, inherits from a parent class. This creates a hierarchy of classes, with each class building on the attributes and methods of the previous class.

This type of inheritance involves creating multiple child classes that inherit from a single parent class. Each child class can add its own unique attributes and methods, but they all share the same parent class.

One of the key benefits of inheritance is code reuse. By inheriting from an existing class, the child class can use the methods and attributes of the parent class without having to rewrite them. This can save developers a lot of time and effort when building new classes.

Another benefit of inheritance is that it allows for polymorphism. Polymorphism is the ability of an object to take on many forms. In Java, this means that a child class can be treated as an instance of its parent class. This allows for more flexibility in the code and can make it easier to write more generic, reusable code.