Technical term for a constraint on an object in imperative programming

Question

I know there's a technical term for this and for the life of me I can't remember it:

When designing a class (or some kind of thing with a functions and data), each call to the object's methods should leave the object's data in a consistent state. "Consistent" means in accord with a series of (hopefully documented, usually not programmed in) constraints called [X]s.

I believe this should be asked on programmers.se – Valamas Mar 19 '12 at 21:30 — Valamas, Mar 19 '12 at 21:30

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 19 '12 at 21:31

1

I think you're getting at "invariants".

Preconditions are things that must be true prior to a method execution. Invariants are things that are always publicly true, and post-conditions are things true following method execution.

answered Mar 19 '12 at 21:31

Erik Dietrich

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Yep, "invariants" was the word I was looking for. Thanks! – josh Mar 19 '12 at 23:37

Technical term for a constraint on an object in imperative programming

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