University of Central Florida (UCF) COP3330 Object Oriented Programming Final Practice Exam

Method overriding occurs in object-oriented programming when a subclass defines a method that has the same name and signature as a method in its superclass. This allows the subclass to provide a specific implementation of that method, effectively "overriding" the implementation provided by the superclass.

In Python, when a method in a subclass has the same name, it signals to the interpreter that the subclass intends to use its version of the method in place of the one defined in the superclass. This enables polymorphism, where the method that gets called is determined by the object that is instantiating the method during runtime, allowing for more dynamic and flexible code.

For example, you might have a superclass `Animal` with a method `speak`, and a subclass `Dog` that overrides the `speak` method to provide a dog-specific sound. When you create an instance of `Dog` and call `speak`, it will invoke the overridden method in the `Dog` class instead of the original method from `Animal`.

This is foundational to implement behavior specific to different subclasses while still maintaining a shared interface through the superclass. To illustrate:

```python

class Animal:

def speak(self):

return "Animal speaks"

class Dog(Animal):