Disabling inherited method on derived class

Question

Is there any way to, in a Java derived class, \"disable\" a method and/or field that is otherwise inherited from a base class?

For example, say you have a Shap

Answer 1

One way to deal with this is to define a second method called (say) boolean isRotatable(), and use this to determine whether the rotation controls are made available to the user.

Another option would be to introduce a Rotatable interface and use shape instanceof Rotatable to make the determination. (However, I think the isRotatable() approach is more flexible.)

In either case, you can implement the rotate() method on a class that should never be rotated as:

public void rotate() {
    throw new UnsupportedOperationException("rotate");
}

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The Java language doesn't provide a way to "remove" or "disable" a method in a subclass. That would violate the substitutability principle and would break polymorphism. A subclass cannot remove visible members from the parent classes API.