The following sections of this BookRags Literature Study Guide is offprint from Gale's For Students Series: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Works: Introduction, Author Biography, Plot Summary, Characters, Themes, Style, Historical Context, Critical Overview, Criticism and Critical Essays, Media Adaptations, Topics for Further Study, Compare & Contrast, What Do I Read Next?, For Further Study, and Sources.
(c)1998-2002; (c)2002 by Gale. Gale is an imprint of The Gale Group, Inc., a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Gale and Design and Thomson Learning are trademarks used herein under license.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction: "Social Concerns", "Thematic Overview", "Techniques", "Literary Precedents", "Key Questions", "Related Titles", "Adaptations", "Related Web Sites". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults: "About the Author", "Overview", "Setting", "Literary Qualities", "Social Sensitivity", "Topics for Discussion", "Ideas for Reports and Papers". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
All other sections in this Literature Study Guide are owned and copyrighted by BookRags, Inc.
An operation is an action or instruction that is performed on or by an object. A program consists of set of operations. A program can be compared to a process. A process consists of many steps. Let's use a laundry example. Mary is going to program her robot maid, Robbie to do the laundry. She would have to create operations or steps for Robbie.
These steps are:
In this example all of then operations are being performed on the clothes (the object). However, Robbie, the washing machine and dryer, which are also objects are performing actions.
Other names used for operations are method, message, functions or events. Examples of operations are jump, load, store, open and close. Functions are different because they do not change the object's state. Examples of functions would be add, subtract, multiply, divide and count.