Member variable

In object-oriented programming, a member variable (sometimes called a member field) is a variable that is associated with a specific object, and accessible for all its methods (member functions).

In class-based programming languages, these are distinguished into two types: class variables (also called static member variables), where only one copy of the variable is shared with all instances of the class; and instance variables, where each instance of the class has its own independent copy of the variable.