Re: about inheritance of subtypes and entities (such as constants) related to a type in the same package

["Dan'l Miller" <optikos@verizon.net>]

On Thursday, May 31, 2018 at 5:45:37 PM UTC-5, Randy Brukardt wrote:
> "Dan'l Miller" wrote in message 
> news:534965d3-e494-476b-8a91-6cf9f376c020@googlegroups.com...
> ...
> >Btw, I realize that Ada's _LRM_ utilizes 1,000 times the term "inherit" 
> >colloquially
> >in the sense of OP's and Dmitry's usage.
> 
> Nothing "colloquially" about it: any term not defined in the RM is used in 
> its English language sense, and specifically from a definition based on a 
> particular dictionary (see 1.3). (Well, there's an exception for 
> mathematical terms, but "inherit" surely isn't one of those.
> 
> In any case, I'm only interested in the terminology of the RM when it comes 
> to discussing Ada. Dmitry has taught me well that there is no point is 
> spending a moment arguing with someone that uses words in some other way - 
> it's virtually impossible even understand what they're actually talking 
> about. So I'm not going to waste any more time in this subthread.
> 
>                                        Randy.

Well, Pierre America said in 1989 substantially the same thing as I did above about inheritance being different than subtyping, and thus needing two distinct non-conflated terms:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234789659_A_behavioural_approach_to_subtyping_in_object-oriented_programming_languages

Conversely in the conflated 2 usages of “inherit” within the _LRM_, in that dictionary, inherit has 4 transitive-verb definitions.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inherit

I assume that only #4 is the one that you are evoking, because #1 speaks of the divine, #2 speaks of biological death, and #3 speaks of genetics.

definition #4:
“to have in turn or •receive• as if from an ancestor”
and its example usage:
“inherited the problem from his predecessor”

In especially the example usage above in that dictionary definition, the inherited problem is from a prior •exemplar• from which the current office-holder's state has been •received• as a copy of the predecessor's state/characteristics.  The predecessor office-holder is more exemplar-to-copy than genetic ancestor passing estate on through bloodlines—thus illustrating my language in prior comments along this thread.  The current office-holder is more copy of state than heir of estate.  And in OO inheritance or Ada83 untagged subtyping, the ancestor need not die (or leave office), as in the dictionary definitions or their example usages, so there does in fact appear to be a different OO definition being utilized in the _LRM_ than the commonfolk dictionary definition of inheritance.