What is the difference between a property and an instance variable?

Question

I think I've been using these terms interchangably / wrongly!

Answer 1

code example done in C#

public class ClassName
{
   private string variable;

   public string property
   {
      get{ return variable; }
      set { variable = value; }
   }
}

Answer 2

Iain, this is basically a terminology question and is, despite the "language-agnostic" tag associated with this question, very language/environment related.

For design discussions sake, property and instance variable can be used interchangeably, since the idea is that a property is a data item describing an object.

When talking about a specific language these two can be different. For example, in C# a property is actually a function that returns an object, while an instance variable is a non-static member variable of a class.

Answer 3

In Java we have something called JavaBeans Properties, but that is basically a instance variable that follows a certain naming pattern for its getter and setter.

Answer 4

At add to what has been said, in a langauge like C#, a property is essentially a get and set function. As a result, it can have custom logic that runs in addition to the getting/setting. An instance variable cannot do this.

Answer 5

Hi.

Maybe thats because you first came from C++ right?! In my school days I had professors that said class properties or class atributes all the time. Since I moved to the Java C# world, I started hearing about members. Class members, instance members...

And then Properties apear! in Java and .NET. So I think its better for you to call it members. Wheather they are instance members (or as you called it instance variable) or class Members....

Cheers!

Answer 6

A property can, and I suppose mostly does, return an instance variable but it can do more. You could put logic in a property, aggregate values or update other instance variables etc. I think it is best to avoid doing so however. Logic should go into methods.

Answer 7

A property is some sort of data associated with an object. For instance, a property of a circle is its diameter, and another is its area.

An instance variable is a piece of data that is stored within an object. It doesn't necessarily need to correspond directly with a property. For instance (heh), a circle may store its radius in an instance variable, and calculate its diameter and area based on that radius. All three are still properties, but only the radius is stored in an instance variable.

Some languages have the concept of "first class" properties. This means that to a client application, the property looks and is used like an instance variable. That is, instead of writing something like circle.getDiameter(), you would write circle.diameter, and instead of circle.setRadius(5), you would write circle.radius = 5.

Answer 8

Hershi is right about this being language specific. But to add to the trail of language specific answers:

In python, an instance variable is an attribute of an instance, (generally) something that is referred to in the instance's dictionary. This is analogous to members or instance variables in Java, except everything is public.

Properties are shortcuts to getter/setter methods that look just like an instance variable. Thus, in the following class definition (modified from Guido's new style object manifesto):

class C(object):

    def __init__(self):
        self.y = 0

    def getx(self):
        if self.y < 0: return 0
        else: return self.y

    def setx(self, x):
        self.y = x

    x = property(getx, setx)

>>> z = C()
>>> z.x = -3
>>> print z.x
0
>>> print z.y
-3
>>> z.x = 5
>>> print z.x
5
>>> print z.y
5

y is an instance variable of z, x is a property. (In general, where a property is defined, there are some techniques used to obscure the associated instance variable so that other code doesn't directly access it.) The benefit of properties in python is that a designer doesn't have to go around pre-emptively encapsulating all instance variables, since future encapsulation by converting an instance variable to a property should not break any existing code (unless the code is taking advantage of loopholes your encapsulation is trying to fix, or relying on class inspection or some other meta-programming technique).

All this is a very long answer to say that at the design level, it's good to talk about properties. It is agnostic as to what type of encapsulation you may need to perform. I guess this principle isn't language agnostic, but does apply to languages beside python.

Answer 9

In contrast to the other answers given, I do think that there is a useful distinction between member variables and properties that is language-agnostic.

The distinction is most apparent in component-oriented programming, which is useful anywhere, but easiest to understand in a graphical UI. In that context, I tend to think of the design-time configuration of a component as manipulating the "properties" of an object. For example, I choose the foreground and background colors, the border style, and font of a text input field by setting its properties. While these properties could be changed at runtime, they typically aren't. At runtime, a different set of variables, representing the content of the field, are much more likely to be read and written. I think of this information as the "state" of the component.

Why is this distinction useful? When creating an abstraction for wiring components together, usually only the "state" variables need to be exposed. Going back to the text field example, you might declare an interface that provides access to the current content. But the "properties" that control the look and feel of the component are only defined on a concrete implementation class.

Answer 10

In objective c, a property is an instance variable which can take advantage of an overloaded dot operator to call its setter and getter. So my.food = "cheeseburger" is actually interpreted as [my setFood:"cheeseburger"]. This is another case where the definition is definitely not language agnostic because objective-c defines the @property keyword.