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Consider the following class hierarchy - class A derives from B, which derives from C, which derives from D.
What is D called? I don't want to call D a base class, because so are B and C. Is there a term in OO parlance that uniquely denotes that class which is the start of a hierarchy?
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The term upper class refers to a group of individuals who occupy the highest place and status in society. These people are considered the wealthiest, lying above the working and middle class in the social hierarchy.
A class hierarchy or inheritance tree in computer science is a classification of object types, denoting objects as the instantiations of classes (class is like a blueprint, the object is what is built from that blueprint) inter-relating the various classes by relationships such as "inherits", "extends", "is an ...
The class at the top of the exception class hierarchy is the Throwable class, which is a direct subclass of the Object class. Throwable has two direct subclasses - Exception and Error.
Other names for the sub-class of a parent are derived class and child class. The hierarchy (sub-class/superclass relationships) of classes can go many levels. A class can have exactly one parent class, but it might have many child classes.
I usually just describe it as the "root of the class hierarchy".
You could also say that it is a "root class", which at least one book defines, albeit a book about C#, and possibly in a slightly different context, but, you know...
Pretty much anything involving the word "root" would be clear and understood.
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