parent Thing -- parent type of an object

parent Thing -- parent type of an object

Synopsis:

Usage: P = parent X

Function: parent

Input:

X, an instance of class Thing: anything

Output:

P, an instance of class Type: the parent class of X

Methods for the instances of X which are not found in X itself are sought in P, and its parent, and so on. Thus the mathematical notion of a set P and a subset X can modeled in this way.

Things which don't have instances have the empty class, called Nothing as their parent. The parent of Thing is Thing itself (because every thing is a thing).

The entire structure of types and their parents can be displayed with showStructure.

See also:

classes and types -- an overview