Interning (computer science)

In computer science, interning is re-using objects of equal value on-demand instead of creating new objects. This creational pattern is frequently used for numbers and strings in different programming languages. In many object-oriented languages such as Python, even primitive types such as integer numbers are objects. To avoid the overhead of constructing a large number of integer objects, these objects get reused through interning.

This article is about the computer science usage. For professional training programs, see Internship.

For interning to work the interned objects must be immutable, since state is shared between multiple variables. String interning is a common application of interning, where many strings with identical values are needed in the same program.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.