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Entities

An entity is a name denoting a quantity, i.e. a value, an object or a method.

Each entity has a type specifying the quantities which it may denote. This might be an class type, or a method type. It may additionally be a polymorphic type $C, i.e. the entity may not only denote values or references of type C but also of any type conforming to C.

Except for methods an entity is usually a variable, i.e. the values which it may denote may be altered by help of an assignment, cf. 6.1. If the specification of the entity is prefixed with the keyword constant then the entity is called a (dynamic) constant; only the assignment given by the initialization is allowed and further assignments are forbidden.


Martin Trapp
Mon Feb 17 16:49:16 MET 1997