Does Multiple Inheritance Pose Any Additional Difficulties?
Yes, it does. Any name can be simply resolved to a class member with single inheritance by simply accessing the first name encountered for data members and by accessing the first signature match (or ambiguity) encountered for methods (at least one way, C++ hides parent member functions with matching names; Java does not). Since several distinct parents can declare a member within a multiple inheritance hierarchy, which to choose becomes an issue. Eiffel forces derived classes to rename parent members that conflict. Self prioritizes parents. CLOS merges member “slots” (instance variables) with the same name into a single slot, as did the earlier flavors. C++ declares an error iff a conflict arises, but a class qualifier can be used to explicitly disambiguate. Smalltalk renders same names for instance variables of subclasses illegal. Java does not support multiple-inheritance and the pragmatics of the language are against the facility. Java does provide multiple inheritance of interfaces
