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For example, an object that uses memoization to cache the results of expensive computations could still be considered an immutable object. Strings and other concrete objects are typically expressed as immutable objects to improve readability and runtime efficiency in object-oriented programming.
For example, one could define a dictionary having a string "toast" mapped to the integer 42 or vice versa. The keys in a dictionary must be of an immutable Python type, such as an integer or a string, because under the hood they are implemented via a hash function. This makes for much faster lookup times, but requires keys not change.
Python has data classes which provides equality testing and can be made immutable using the frozen parameter. [21] It overrides the __str__ dunder method. [22] This example implementation includes a static method which can be used to initialize a new instance with a randomly generated universally unique identifier (UUID).
In object-oriented programming, "immutable interface" is a pattern for designing an immutable object. [1] The immutable interface pattern involves defining a type which does not provide any methods which mutate state. Objects which are referenced by that type are not seen to have any mutable state, and appear immutable.
Similarly, the idea of immutable data from functional programming is often included in imperative programming languages, [108] for example the tuple in Python, which is an immutable array, and Object.freeze() in JavaScript. [109]
There are multiple ways to implement the flyweight pattern. One example is mutability: whether the objects storing extrinsic flyweight state can change. Immutable objects are easily shared, but require creating new extrinsic objects whenever a change in state occurs. In contrast, mutable objects can share state.
In a number of object-oriented languages, there is the concept of an immutable object, which is particularly used for basic types like strings; notable examples include Java, JavaScript, Python, and C#. These languages vary in whether user-defined types can be marked as immutable, and may allow particular fields (attributes) of an object or ...
Python makes a distinction between lists and tuples. Lists are written as [1, 2, 3], are mutable, and cannot be used as the keys of dictionaries (dictionary keys must be immutable in Python). Tuples, written as (1, 2, 3), are immutable and thus can be used as keys of dictionaries, provided all of the tuple's elements are immutable.