Misnomer in the term "child class"

SystemVerilog
,
1

I have read some articles and videos here in Verification Academy, and what I noticed is that there seems to be a misnomer regarding the term “child class”. According to other websites, a child class is also called a subclass which means that it is the derived or inherited class from a base/parent class. For example, in the code below, class C is a child class of class P, since the former is extended from class P:


class P;

endclass : P

class C extends P;

endclass : C

However, some articles or videos here in Verification Academy also refers an instantiated class as a child class. Example:


class A;

endclass : A

class P;

A A_h; // Should we treat an instantiated class as a child of class P?

endclass : P

So, should we treat an instantiated class as a child of the class where it was instantiated?
Please correct me if I’m wrong.

Thanks.

2

In reply to Reuben:
The words parent and child are ad-hoc terminology. I recommend against using parent and child when referring to OOP inheritance. Parents create(construct) children and they are distinct objects from their parents. When you inherit property, that property becomes yours and all your property is part of one object.

The UVM uses terms parent and child to refer to relationships between objects when build a hierarchical tree/graph structure. The class uvm_component has a handle to its parent and handles to all its children so that you can traverse the hierarchical structure. This terminology is used in most programming languages and is independent of OOP.