OOP: Object (Definitions)

"The type all other types derive from." (Jesse Liberty, "Programming C# 2nd Ed.", 2002)

"A set of variables and associated methods. An object can be sent messages to cause one of its methods to be executed." (Stephen G Kochan, "Programming in Objective-C", 2003)

"A specific instance of a class." (Marcus Green & Bill Brogden, "Java 2™ Programmer Exam Cram™ 2 (Exam CX-310-035)", 2003)

"In the UML, an instance of a class that encapsulates state and behavior. More informally, an example of a thing." (Craig Larman, "Applying UML and Patterns", 2004)

"An instance of a class, a thing, an entity, or a concept that is represented in contiguous memory in a computer. See instance, class." (Michael Fitzgerald, "Learning Ruby", 2007)

"A unique instance of a data structure defined according to the template provided by its class. Each object has its own values for the variables belonging to its class, and can respond to the methods defined by its class." (Craig F Smith & H Peter Alesso, "Thinking on the Web: Berners-Lee, Gödel and Turing", 2008)

"A cohesive unit with a particular state, possible state transitions, and behaviors. In Scala, the keyword object is used to declare a singleton explicitly, using the same syntax as class declarations, except for the lack of constructor parameters and auxiliary parameters (because objects are instantiated by the Scala runtime, not by user code). To avoid confusion with objects, we use the term instance to refer to instances of classes and objects generically." (Dean Wampler & Alex Payne, "Programming Scala", 2009)

"A cohesive unit with a particular state, possible state transitions, and behaviors. In Java, an object is an instance of a class." (Dean Wampler, "Functional Programming for Java Developers", 2011)

"A structure consisting of data and methods together with their interactions. An object is not just data, but the encapsulation of its state (data) and behavior (methods)." (Craig S Mullins, "Database Administration", 2012)

"An instance of a class. Something that 'knows' what user-defined type (class) it is, and what it can do because of what class it is. Your program can request an object to do things, but the object gets to decide whether it wants to do them or not. Some objects are more accommodating than others." (Jon Orwant et al, "Programming Perl" 4th Ed., 2012)

"A passive entity that contains or receives information. Access to an object potentially implies access to the information that it contains. Examples of objects include records, pages, memory segments, files, directories, directory trees, and programs." (Shon Harris & Fernando Maymi, "CISSP All-in-One Exam Guide, 8th Ed", 2018)

"In object-oriented design or programming, an abstraction that consists of data and operations associated with that data." (Sybase, "Open Server Server-Library/C Reference Manual", 2019)

"In an object-oriented programming context, an object is an instance of a class or type." (Alex Thomas, "Natural Language Processing with Spark NLP", 2020)

"The fundamental structural unit of an object-oriented programming language, encapsulating a set of data and behavior that operates on that data." (Daniel Leuck et al, "Learning Java, 5th Ed.", 2020)

"An instance of a class." (Rod Stephens, "Beginning Software Engineering", 2015)

"An entity or thing that is relevant in the context of a problem" (Nell Dale & John Lewis, "Computer Science Illuminated, 6th Ed.", 2015)