Yes, parent class, base class, super class all mean the same. And from your description, it is not what you need. inheritance describes an 'is-a' relationship, not a 'has-a'. For a 'has-a', you want all these smaller objects to be member variables (properties) of the bigger class (container). Since there's no inheritance, the methods and properties of the smaller objects are completely different from the methods of the bigger object. That corresponds exactly to your description of the method/property of the container that sums up properties of the smaller object.
So your bigger class should be defined something like:
classdef bigclass
properties %possibly with (SetAccess = private)
smallobjects; %or smallclass smallobjects to indicate that smallobjects can only be of type smallclass
end
properties (Dependent)
area;
end
function this = bigclass() %constructor
%fill the smallobjects array however you want
this.smallobjects = smallclass.empty;
for n = 1:100
this.smallobjects(n) = bigclass(rand);
end
end
function area = get.area(this)
area = 0;
for n = 1:numel(this.smallobjects)
area = area + this.smallobjects(n).area;
end
end
end
If needed, the container class can be granted special access to private methods of the small class in order to preserve encapsulation (See Specify access to class members).
Note that this has nothing to do with handle versus value class. The choice of this is more to do with the purpose of the class rather than its hierarchy. The container class can either be handle or value. Your small class would probably be a value class.
