What does the keyword `super` in Solidity do?

Question

I came across the super keyword in Solidity in the context of overriding functions. What does it do?

Answer 1

The super keyword in Solidity gives access to the immediate parent contract from which the current contract is derived. When having a contract A with a function f() that derives from B which also has a function f(), A overrides the f of B. That means that myInstanceOfA.f() will call the version of f that is implemented inside A itself, the original version implemented inside B is not visible anymore. The original function f from B (being A's parent) is thus available inside A via super.f(). Alternatively, one can explicitly specifying the parent of which one wants to call the overridden function because multiple overriding steps are possible as exemplified in the example below:

pragma solidity ^0.4.5;

contract C {
  uint u;
  function f() {
    u = 1;
  }
}

contract B is C {
  function f() {
    u = 2;
  }
}

contract A is B {
  function f() {  // will set u to 3
    u = 3;
  }
  function f1() { // will set u to 2
    super.f();
  }
  function f2() { // will set u to 2
    B.f();
  }
  function f3() { // will set u to 1
    C.f();
  }
}