Welcome Programmer: Class and Object in C++

Class and Object in C++

Object is the physical as well as logical entity where as class is the only logical entity.

Class: Class is a blue print which is containing only list of variables and method and no memory is allocated for them. A class is a group of objects that has common properties.

A class in C++ contains, following properties;

Data Member
Method
Constructor
Block
Class and Interface

Object: Object is a instance of class, object has state and behaviors.

An Object in C++ has three characteristics:

State
Behavior
Identity

Syntax

class_name object_reference;

Example

Employee e;

State: Represents data (value) of an object.

Behavior: Represents the behavior (functionality) of an object such as deposit, withdraw etc.

Identity: Object identity is typically implemented via a unique ID. The value of the ID is not visible to the external user. But,it is used internally by the JVM to identify each object uniquely.

Class is also can be used to achieve user defined data types.

In real world many examples of object and class like dog, cat, and cow are belong to animal's class. Each object has state and behaviors. For example a dog has state:- color, name, height, age as well as behaviors:- barking, eating, and sleeping.

Vehicle class

Car, bike, truck these all are belongs to vehicle class. These Objects have also different different states and behaviors. For Example car has state - color, name, model, speed, Mileage. as we;; as behaviors - distance travel

Difference between Class and Object in C++

	Class	Object
1	Class is a container which collection of variables and methods.	object is a instance of class
2	No memory is allocated at the time of declaration	Sufficient memory space will be allocated for all the variables of class at the time of declaration.
3	One class definition should exist only once in the program.	For one class multiple objects can be created.

Syntax to declare a Class

Syntax

 class Class_Name
  {  
    data member;  
    method;  
  }

Simple Example of Object and Class

In this example, we have created a Employee class that have two data members eid and ename. We are creating the object of the Employee class and printing the objects value.

Example

#include<iostream.h>
#include<conio.h>

class Employee
{
public:
int salary  // data member
void sal()
{
  cout<<"Enter salary: ";
  cin>>salary;
  cout<<"Salary: "<<salary;
}
};
 void main()
 {
  clrscr();
  Employee e; //creating an object of Employee
  e.sal();
  getch();
 }