Multiple Inheritance and Linearization

Question

Hello to everyone. I am looking at multiple inheritance in Solidity. I came across this example within their documentation, but it is not understandable enought for me.

Can someone explane this sentence in more detail:

The reason for this is that C requests X to override A (by specifying A, X in this order), but A itself requests to override X, which is a contradiction that cannot be resolved.

My question is why C requests X to override A, i.e. what this order of inheritance means exactly?

    pragma solidity ^0.4.0;

     contract X {}
     contract A is X {}
     contract C is A, X {}

branko terzic · Accepted Answer · 2019-05-07T09:43:42.333

12

After research I found:

With multiple inheritance, there is an issue caused by the Diamond Problem. Solidity solves this problem like Python.

Here are two links describing this problem in detail: https://docs.python.org/2/tutorial/classes.html#instance-objects https://www.python.org/download/releases/2.3/mro/

So, the order of inheritance is important in order to avoid the Diamond problem. Order should be: from classes on the top level of inheritance to the classes on lower levels

edited May 07 '19 at 09:43

answered Jul 12 '17 at 16:59

branko terzic

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For completeness link to the solidity documentation https://solidity.readthedocs.io/en/develop/contracts.html#multiple-inheritance-and-linearization – Ismael Jul 14 '17 at 04:17
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Just a small observation to avoid pitfalls: in Python the base classes are searched from left to right. In Solidity is right to left. – shamisen Nov 10 '21 at 01:19

score 7 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 19 '19 at 17:12

Best explained in the solidity docs on Multiple Inheritance and Linearization:

You have to list the direct base contracts in the order from “most base-like” to “most derived”. Note that this order is the reverse of the one used in Python.

Another simplifying way to explain this is that when a function is called that is defined multiple times in different contracts, the given bases are searched from right to left (left to right in Python) in a depth-first manner, stopping at the first match. If a base contract has already been searched, it is skipped.

Multiple Inheritance and Linearization

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