A social grouping, based on job, wealth, etc. In Britain, society is commonly split into three main classes; upper class, middle class and working class
a basic building block of object-oriented programming Classes define types of objects by specifying their properties (data) and the procedures ("methods") they support Classes are more powerful than normal programs, because they are flexible blueprints for generating programs Unlike programs, a new class can be derived easily from a an existing class and inherit its properties and functions ("sub-classing"), with additional programming only to the extent that the classes actually differ Classes make it possible to decompose large, complex programs into much more manageable, maintainable pieces of logic, which leads to more dependable applications
In C++, a class is the basic construct for defining a self-contained object Classes have their own member functions and data
A class of things is a group of them with similar characteristics. the division of the stars into six classes of brightness
A group of individuals ranked together as possessing common characteristics; as, the different classes of society; the educated class; the lower classes
(biology) a taxonomic group containing one or more orders a body of students who are taught together; "early morning classes are always sleepy"
[M206] As with real-world classification, a class groups together objects that the programmer considers to be similar The class gives the description of a set of objects with similar characteristics and attributes One class description serves to describe all instances (members) of that class The class describes the common protocol followed by the individual members (instances) Objects of the same class respond to the same set of messages (the instance protocol), have the same attributes and respond in the same way to each message
—In NET languages, classes are templates used for defining new types Classes describe both the properties and behaviors of objects Properties contain the data that are exposed by the class Behaviors are the functionality of the object, and are defined by the public methods (also called member functions) and events of the class Collectively, the public properties and methods of a class are known as the object interface Classes themselves are not objects, but instead they are used to instantiate (i e , create) objects in memory See structure