Professional Programming Solutions for Pet Class and Inherited Classes

What are the key features of the Pet class and its inherited classes?

How does the Pet class store information about a pet, and what functions are included to interact with this data?

Explanation:

The program defines a Pet class that stores a pet's name, age, and weight, and includes constructors, accessors, mutators, and a function to get the pet's lifespan.

The program starts by defining a Pet class that has private member variables for the pet's name, age, and weight. It includes appropriate constructors to initialize the object, accessor functions to retrieve the values of the variables, and mutator functions to modify them. The Pet class also defines a function named "getlifespan" that returns a string with the value "unknown lifespan."

Next, a Dog class is derived from the Pet class, adding a private member variable named "breed" to store the breed of the dog. The Dog class includes mutator and accessor functions for the breed variable and appropriate constructors. The "getlifespan" function is redefined in the Dog class. If the dog's weight is over 100 pounds, it returns "approximately 7 years," and if the weight is under 100 pounds, it returns "approximately 13 years."

Then, a Rock class is derived from the Pet class. The "getlifespan" function is redefined in the Rock class to return "thousands of years."

Finally, a test program can be written to create instances of pet dogs and pet rocks, showcasing the inherited and redefined functions.