Difference between superclass and supertype and the difference between subclass and subtype

Question

Are they interchangeable terms? Would you be able to give formal definitions and also examples?

Answer 1

Both terms (superclass and supertype) are related, but they are not exactly interchangeable.

Only classes have superclasses, while other classifiers have supertypes. Since Class is also a Classifier, a superclass is always a supertype (because superclass redefines the general association between classifiers), but the opposite is not true.

For instance, the primitive type long in Java is defined as a supertype of int. Since primitive types are not classes, long is not a superclass of int.

Another example: in UML, components and interfaces are different from classes (all of them are classifiers), then it is not correct to say "the superclass of a component" but "the supertype of a component".