What is the difference between an Instance and an Object

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What is the difference between an Instance and an Object  Is there a difference or not

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Class    A class is a blue print  Object   It is the copy of the class  Instance   Its a variable which is used to hold memory address of the object   A very basic analytical example  Class House --  Blueprint of the house  But you can t live in the blue print  You need a physical House which is the instance of the class to live in  i e   actual address of the object is instance  Instances represent objects

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An instance is a specific representation of an object   An object is a generic thing while an instance is a single object that has been created in memory   Usually an instance will have values assigned to it s properties that differentiates it from other instances of the type of object

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I can t believe  except for one guy no one has used the code to explain this  let me give it a shot too      Design Class class HumanClass       var name String     init name String            self name   name          var humanClassObject1   HumanClass name   Rehan      Now the left side i e   humanClassObject1  is the object and the right side i e  HumanClass name   Rehan   is the instance of this object   var humanClassObject2   HumanClass name   Ahmad      again object on left and it s instance on the right    So basically  instance contains the specific values for that object and objects contains the memory location  at run-time    Remember the famous statement  object reference not set to an instance of an object   this means that non-initialised objects don t have any instance  In some programming languages like swift the compiler will not allow you to even design a class that don t have any way to initialise all it s members  variable eg  name  age e t c   but in some language you are allowed to do this      Design Class class HumanClass       var name String    See we don t have any way to initialise name property      And the error will only be shown at run time when you try to do something like this   var myClass   HumanClass   print myClass name     will give  object reference not set to an instance of the object    This error indicates that  the specific values  for variables property  is the  INSTANCE  as i tried to explain this above  And the object i e   myClass  contains the memory location  at run-time

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Excellent question   I ll explain it in the simplest way possible  Say you have 5 apples in your basket  Each of those apples is an object of type Apple  which has some characteristics  i e  big  round  grows on trees    In programming terms  you can have a class called Apple  which has variables size big  shape round  habitat grows on trees  To have 5 apples in your basket  you need to instantiate 5 apples  Apple apple1  Apple apple2  Apple apple3 etc      Alternatively  Objects are the definitions of something  instances are the physical things   Does this make sense

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If we see the Definition of Object and Instance object -   Memory allocated for the member of class at run time is called object or object is the instance of Class   Let us see the Definition of instance -  Memory allocated For Any at run time is called as instance variable   Now understand the meaning of any run time memory allocation happen in C also through Malloc  Calloc  Realloc such   struct p      p  t1 t1  p  malloc sizeof p     So here also we are allocating run time memory allocation but here we call as instance so t1 is instance here we can not say t1 as object so Every object is the instance of Class but every Instance is not Object

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Object   It is a generice term basically it is a Software bundle that has state variables  and behaviour methods   Class    A blue print template  for an object instance-it s a unique object thing for example you create a object two times what does that mean is yo have created two instances   Let me give an example  Class student        private string firstName    public student string fname          firstName fname        Public string GetFirstName           return firstName          Object example   Student s1 new student  Martin       Student s2 new student  Kumar     The s1 s2 are having object of class Student  Instance   s1 and s2 are instances of object student the two are unique   it can be called as reference also   basically the s1 and s2 are variables that are assigned an object

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Instance  instance means just creating a reference copy    object  means when memory location is associated with the object  is a run-time entity of the class  by using the new operator   In simple words  Instance refers to the copy of the object at a particular time whereas object refers to the memory address of the class

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When a variable is declared of a custom type  class   only a reference is created  which is called an object  At this stage  no memory is allocated to this object  It acts just as a pointer  to the location where the object will be stored in future   This process is called  Declaration     Employee e     e is an object   On the other hand  when a variable of custom type is declared using the new operator  which allocates memory in heap to this object and returns the reference to the allocated memory  This object which is now termed as instance  This process is called  Instantiation      Employee e   new Employee       e is an instance   On the other hand  in some languages such as Java  an object is equivalent to an instance  as evident from the line written in Oracle s documentation on Java      Note  The phrase  instantiating a class  means the same thing as  creating an object   When you create an object  you are creating an  instance  of a class  therefore  instantiating  a class

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Let s say you re building some chairs   The diagram that shows how to build a chair and put it together corresponds to a software class   Let s say you build five chairs according to the pattern in that diagram   Likewise  you could construct five software objects according to the pattern in a class   Each chair has a unique number burned into the bottom of the seat to identify each specific chair   Chair 3 is one instance of a chair pattern   Likewise  memory location 3 can contain one instance of a software pattern   So  an instance  chair 3  is a single unique  specific manifestation of a chair pattern

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An object is a generic thing  for example  take a linear function in maths   ax b is an object  While 3x 2 is an instance of that object  Object lt  lt  lt  Instance   General lt  lt  lt  Specific   There is nothing more to this

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each object said to be an instance of its class but each instance of the class has its own value for each attributes  intances shares the attribute name and operation with their intances of class but an object contains an implicit reference to his on class

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Objects and instances are mostly same  but there is a very small difference  If Car is a class  3 Cars are 3 different objects  All of these objects are instances  So these 3 cars are objects from instances of the Car class   But the word  instance  can mean  structure instance  also  But object is only for classes   All of the objects are instances  Not all of the instances must be objects  Instances may be  structure instances  or  objects   I hope this makes the difference clear to you

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An object is a construct  something static that has certain features and traits  such as properties and methods  it can be anything  a string  a usercontrol  etc   An instance is a unique copy of that object that you can use and do things with     Imagine a product like a computer   THE xw6400 workstation is an object  YOUR xw6400 workstation   or YOUR WIFE s xw6400 workstation  is an instance of the xw6400 workstation object

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Object - An instance of a class  that has its own state and access to all  of the behaviour defined by its class   Instance - Reference to an memory area for that particular class

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An object can be a class  say you have a class called basketball    but you want to have multiple basketballs so in your code you create more than 1 basketball  say basketball1 and basketball2  Then you run your application  You now have 2 instances of the object basketball

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The Instance and Object are from Object Oriented Programming  For some programming languages like Java  C    and Smalltalk  it is important to describe and understand code  In other languages that used in Structured Programming  this concept doesn t exist  This is a view from Structural Programming  There s no real significant difference that should consume too much of your time  There might be some fancy language that some people might take up a lot of spaces to write about  but at the end of the day  as far as a coder  developer  programmer  architect  is concerned  an instance of a class and an object mean the same thing and can often be used interchangeably  I have never met anyone in my career that would be picky and spend a half-hour trying to point out the differences because there s really none   Time can be better spent on other development efforts  UPDATE With regards to Swift  this is what Apple who invented Swift prefers    An instance of a class is traditionally known as an object  However  Swift classes and structures are much closer in functionality than in other languages  and much of this chapter describes functionality that can apply to instances of either a class or a structure type  Because of this  the more general term instance is used

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Quick and Simple Answer   Class       a specification  blueprint for an object  Object      physical presence of the class in memory Instance    an unique copy of the object  same structure  different data

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Object refers to class and instance refers to an object In other words instance is a copy of an object with particular values in it

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Once you instantiate a class  using new   that instantiated thing becomes an object  An object is something that can adhere to encapsulation  polymorphism  abstraction principles of object oriented programming and the real thing a program interacts with to consume the instance members defined in class  Object contains instance members  non-static members    Thus instance of a class is an object  The word    instance    is used when you are referring to the origin from where it born  it s more clearer if you say    instance of a class    compared to    object of a class     although the latter can be used to    Can also read the  Inner classes  section of this java document on nested classes - https   docs oracle com javase tutorial java javaOO nested html

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Regarding the difference between an object and an instance  I do not think there is any consensus   It looks to me like people change it pretty much interchangeably  in papers  blog posts  books or conversations    As for me  the way I see it is  an object is a generic and alive entity in the memory  specified by the language it is used in  Just like the Object class in Java  We do not much care its type  or anything else associated with it  whether it is managed by a container or not    An instance is an object but associated with a type  as in this method accepts Foo instances  or you can not put Animal instances in an instance of  a List of Vehicles    objects for example have locks associated with them  not instances  whereas instances have methods  objects are garbage collected  not instances    But as I said  this is only how I see it  and I do not think there is any organisation we can refer to for a standard definition between them and everyone will pretty much have their slightly different understanding   definitions  of course within limits

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This answer may be seen as trite  but worrying about the differences between an instance and object is already trite city    I think its best depicted in javascript   let obj    poo  1       obj  is an object   verses  Class Trash       constructor   this poo   1      let i   new Trash        i  is an instance

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Java is an object-oriented programming language  OOP   This means  that everything in Java  except of the primitive types is an object    Now  Java objects are similar to real-world objects  For example we can create a car object in Java  which will have properties like current speed and color  and behavior like  accelerate and park   That s Object     Instance  on the other side  is a uniquely initialized copy of that object that looks like Car car   new Car     Check it out to learn more about Java classes and object

[oop] What is the difference between an Instance and an Object?

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