extends

The extends keyword is used in a class declaration to specify the direct superclass of the class being declared. The superclass can be thought of as the class from whose implementation the implementation of the current class is derived. The class being declared is said to be the direct subclass of the class it extends. If no class is explicitly defined as the superclass with the extends keyword, then that class has the class java.lang.Object as its implicitly declared superclass.

When a class is extended, the class being declared has access to all the public and protected variables and methods of it's superclass. Note that classes declared with the keyword final cannot be subclassed.

The following example shows typical use of the keyword extends:

public class TransactionApplet extends Applet
{
    .
    .
    .
}