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In object-oriented (OO) and functional programming, an immutable object (unchangeable [1] object) is an object whose state cannot be modified after it is created. [2] This is in contrast to a mutable object (changeable object), which can be modified after it is created. [ 3 ]
In object-oriented programming, "immutable interface" is a pattern for designing an immutable object. [1] The immutable interface pattern involves defining a type which does not provide any methods which mutate state. Objects which are referenced by that type are not seen to have any mutable state, and appear immutable.
Final variables can be used to construct trees of immutable objects. Once constructed, these objects are guaranteed not to change anymore. To achieve this, an immutable class must only have final fields, and these final fields may only have immutable types themselves. Java's primitive types are immutable, as are strings and several other classes.
Many languages have explicit pointers or references. Reference types differ from these in that the entities they refer to are always accessed via references; for example, whereas in C++ it's possible to have either a std:: string and a std:: string *, where the former is a mutable string and the latter is an explicit pointer to a mutable string (unless it's a null pointer), in Java it is only ...
One example is mutability: whether the objects storing extrinsic flyweight state can change. Immutable objects are easily shared, but require creating new extrinsic objects whenever a change in state occurs. In contrast, mutable objects can share state. Mutability allows better object reuse via the caching and re-initialization of old, unused ...
The immutable keyword denotes data that cannot be modified through any reference. The const keyword denotes a non-mutable view of mutable data. Unlike C++ const, D const and immutable are "deep" or transitive, and anything reachable through a const or immutable object is const or immutable respectively. Example of const vs. immutable in D
Mutable (non-const) operations can then be implemented in such a way that they create new objects instead of modifying the existing ones. This approach is characteristic of functional programming and is also used by the string implementations in Java, C#, and Python. (See Immutable object.)
Because fields in C# classes are always mutable, variantly parameterized classes in C# would not be very useful. But languages which emphasize immutable data can make good use of covariant data types. For example, in all of Scala, Kotlin and OCaml the immutable list type is covariant: List [Cat] is a subtype of List [Animal].