Not mutable; not capable or susceptible of change; unchangeable; unalterable.
In some programming languages, objects of some types are immutable, that is, they cannot be modified. For example, in Standard ML, only arrays and refs are mutable; all other objects are immutable. This property can be very useful for garbage collection. For instance, no immutable object may contain a reference to an object younger than itself, and no immutable object will appear in a remembered set. Garbage collectors for these languages often take advantage of this property. In lazy languages, the evaluation of an expression may require an object of a different size, and adjustment of references may take place. This means that, although objects might be immutable at the language level, they are not immutable at the implementation level, and may contain references to younger objects. Opposites: mutable. See also: generational garbage collection.
objects that are immutable cannot be changed, e.g. a document that has been issued is immutable as it may be revised but cannot be edited
The property of never changing observable state after creation. implicit concept A concept that is necessary to understand the meaning of a model or design but is never mentioned.
not subject or susceptible to change or variation in form or quality or nature; "the view of that time was that all species were immutable, created by God"
an object whose class will not permit it to be changed after it is constructed
An object with fixed value. Immutable objects include numbers, strings and tuples. Such an object cannot be altered. A new object has to be created if a different value has to be stored. They play an important role in places where a constant hash value is needed such as the keys of a dictionary.
Not capable of being modified after it is created. It is an error to attempt to modify an immutable object, though Dylan implementations are not required to detect this error. The opposite of immutable is mutable.
1. (of an object) Having components that cannot be modified once the object has been created, such as regions, colors and opacities, text styles, and line styles. 2. (of a class) An immutable class is a class all of whose objects are immutable.
Eternally unchanging. A quality belonging to God alone.
Not subject to change, unchangable, as in reference to GOD.
An object with fixed value. Immutable objects are numbers, strings or tuples (and more). Such an object cannot be altered. A new object has to be created if a different value has to be stored. They play an important role in places where a constant hash value is needed, for example as a key in a dictionary.
Incapable of being changed.
adj. not subject to change, either because no operator is provided which is capable of effecting such change or because some constraint exists which prohibits the use of an operator that might otherwise be capable of effecting such a change. Except as explicitly indicated otherwise, implementations are not required to detect attempts to modify immutable objects or cells; the consequences of attempting to make such modification are undefined. Numbers are immutable.
An immutable object is one that, after creation, is `read-only'; it cannot be changed; none of its methods changes it.
A class is immutable if is defines no mutator methods. This means that once the state of an object is initialized by a constructor, it will never change. String and the wrapper classes are all immutable.