Child objects inheriting property values

I have a hierarchy of objects that share some attributes, e.g. both my
parent Record and Column objects have a columnDelimiter property.  I want
this property on the Column object to default to the same property on the
Record object, until specified on the Column object.  What is the best way
to go about this?  I could give each Column a reference to the Record it
belongs to, but this seems not quite right to me.  My other option is to
have the Record act as a ColumnFactory, setting the columnDelimiter value on
each Column it creates, until a set accessor on Column optionally overrides
that default value.


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