On Mar 20, 4:50 am, "Alfredo Novoa" <alfred..._at_gmail.com> wrote:
> On 20 mar, 04:53, "Marshall" <marshall.spi..._at_gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > In what way is that not well-defined? "A legal entity is either
> > > > a person or a corporation." No problem.
>
> > > It does not specify whether the instance is a value or a variable.
>
> > Do you actually not know what it means
>
> I know 4 or 5 meanings of the word instance.
>
> If instance means example then we could have value instances and
> variable instances. It seems that the spec only talks about variable
> instances. Although my first thought was that instance meant only
> value (occurrence) in the definition, but I was obviously wrong.
>
Read "data structure" for instance, if you find that to be clearer.
In Java, a data structure conforming to a type definition (e.g.
Point),
typically encapsulating some state and permitting access to that
state through methods, according to the prescriptions of the type.
Hence, we speak of instance of a type. Such a data structure may
be regarded as a value, if that's important to you.
Regards,
Daniel Parker
Received on Tue Mar 20 2007 - 08:10:35 CDT
