Object Oriented Software Engineering View all facts Glossary Help |
subject > programming language construct > data item > variable > instance variable |
instance variable (data member, field) | ||||
subject | fact |
instance variable | is a synonym of data member | |
is a synonym of field | ||
has definition A data item present in all the instances of a class, normally used to implement associations and attributes | ||
implements an attribute or association | ||
is a subtopic of 2.3 - Instance Variables | ||
is a kind of variable | ||
should be as private as reasonably possible - almost never make them public | ||
variable | can contain different classes of objects depending on the type of the variable | |
can refer to a particular object, several different objects during the execution of a program, or no object at all | ||
has scope | ||
has type | ||
should have comment if it is non-obvious |
Kinds of instance variable :