title: Using parent constructor in a child class in Java
body: <p>I have a class "ChildClass" that extends the class "ParentClass". Rather than completely replace the constructor for the parent class, I want to call the parent class's constructor first, and then do some extra work.</p>
  
  <p>I believe that by default the parent class's 0 arguments constructor is called. This isn't what I want. I need the constructor to be called with an argument. Is this possible?</p>
  
  <p>I tried</p>
  
  <pre><code>this = (ChildClass) (new  ParentClass(someArgument));
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>but that doesn't work because you can't modify "this".</p>