Object (object-oriented programming)

In object-oriented programming, an object is a specific instance of a class in memory.

Objects in LabVIEW

LabVIEW has a pure by-value syntax for its objects. When a wire forks, the object may be duplicated, as decided by the LabVIEW compiler.

An object is a self-aware piece of data. It knows its own type (that is why objects can perform operations such as To More Specific Class and dynamic dispatching).

LabVIEW allocates a single instance of the default value of the class. Any object that is the default value shares that pointer. This sharing means that if you have a very large array as the default value of your class there will initially only be one copy of that array in memory. When you write to an object’s data, if that object is currently sharing the default data pointer, LabVIEW duplicates the default value and then perform the write on the duplicate. Sharing the default instance makes the entire system use much less memory and makes opening a VI much faster.