Method

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What Does Method Mean?

A method, in the context of object-oriented programming, is a procedure or function associated with a class. As part of a class, a method defines a particular behavior of a class instance. A class can have more than one method.

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Techopedia Explains Method

The idea of methods appears in all object-oriented programming languages. Methods are similar to functions or procedures in other programming languages such as C, SQL and Delphi.

An object method can only have access to the data known by that object. This maintains the integrity of data between sets of objects in a program. A method can be reused in many objects.

As a simple example, let’s say that a module has a VideoClip object that handles functions related to movie clips. The VideoClip object would probably have some of the following methods:

  • Play: Begin playing the movie clip.
  • Pause: Pause the movie clip.
  • Stop: Stop playing the movie clip.
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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.