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What is an immutable class, and its importance in programming? Also, Provide an example.

Utpal Vishwas22502-Jul-2023

What is an immutable class, and its importance in programming? Also, Provide an example.

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Updated on 04-Jul-2023
Utpal Vishwas

Utpal Vishwas

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I am Utpal Vishwas from Uttar Pradesh. Have completed my B. Tech. course from MNNIT campus Prayagraj in 2022. I have good knowledge of computer networking.

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Aryan Kumar

Aryan Kumar

04-Jul-2023

In object-oriented programming, an immutable class is a class whose state cannot be changed after it is created. This means that the values of the class's fields cannot be changed, and the class can be in only one state at a time.

Immutable classes are important in programming for a number of reasons:

  • They are thread-safe. This means that they can be safely accessed by multiple threads at the same time without the risk of data corruption. This is because the state of an immutable object cannot be changed by any thread, so there is no risk of one thread's changes being overwritten by another thread.
  • They are easier to reason about. This is because their state cannot change, so you can be sure that the object will always have the same properties. This makes it easier to write correct code that relies on the properties of immutable objects.
  • They can be used to create more efficient code. This is because immutable objects do not need to be copied when they are passed to functions or stored in data structures. This can improve the performance of your program.

Here is an example of an immutable class in Python:

Python

class ImmutableClass:
    def __init__(self, value):
        self.value = value

    def __repr__(self):
        return f"ImmutableClass({self.value})"


def main():
    immutable_class = ImmutableClass(10)
    print(immutable_class)  # ImmutableClass(10)
    immutable_class.value = 20  # This line will raise an error

In this example, the ImmutableClass class has a single field, value, which is initialized to the value 10. The __repr__() method returns a string representation of the object. The main() function creates a ImmutableClass object and prints it. Then, it attempts to change the value of the value field, but this line will raise an error because the value field is immutable.

Immutable classes can be used in a variety of programming scenarios. For example, they can be used to represent data that should never change, such as the results of a calculation or the state of a game. They can also be used to create thread-safe objects that can be safely accessed by multiple threads at the same time.

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