CODEWITHSUNDEEP
databaseobject
Darren Griffith
Darren Griffith

Reputation: 3460

What do you call a parent with no children?

I have some code where the user can delete one child record of a parent record one at a time. I'm detecting when there are no children left. At that point, I'm deleting the parent record as well. When coming up with a name for the variable, I realized I don't know what you call a parent with no children.

Is there a single, accepted name that I haven't heard of (or can't remember)?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 4820

Answers (2)

KANJICODER
KANJICODER

Reputation: 3885

Leaf: (no children)

Terminal: (never children)

Vacant: (had children)

Orphan: (no parent)

Leaf seems pretty standard according to wikipedia. "Terminal Node" on wikipedia will re-direct you to leaf node.

Vacant node in more detail:

Your orphanage had a child. The child got adopted and left. Your orpahage is now vacant.

Terminal node in more detail:

Example in OpenGL:

An EBO references a VAO. A VAO references a VBO. A VBO is raw data and references nothing else.

( EBO --> VAO --> VBO )

Thinking of the VBO as a "terminal node" would make more sense than thinking of it as a leaf. Because it will not and cannot have children.

Upvotes: 4

philipxy
philipxy

Reputation: 15148

There are two common computer science notions of parent: relative/transitive and absolute/non-transitive. One node can be the parent of another (a child). (Hence, object of a transitive "is" or "parents"). A node with no children is a leaf node; a node with children is a parent node. (Hence, object of a non-transitive "is"). Neither of these involve the non-instantaneous notion of ever once having had children, eg as in the real world.

Each node of the type you are describing is during processing (before and after pruning) both a parent and not a parent. So you are using something like the non-instantaneous/real-world third meaning, something like "was a parent but isn't any more". (Think about what you're saying: it's a parent in the sense that it used to be a parent node even though it's not a parent node. So it's a parent ...because... it's not a parent.)

Once it's going to be deleted, how about NoLongerParent? But if you're just using a name for that node for all the processing, and it starts as a non-leaf, why not just Parent?

Upvotes: 1

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