What are instance variables?

Variables associated with the instance of a class are called instance variables. Whenever a class is instantiated, the runtime system creates a separate copy of each instance variable defined by the class. Therefore, each instance of a class has its own copy of all instance variables defined by the class.

If an instance variable is in the scope, it can be accessed simply by its name. However, if it is not in the scope, it is accessed by its name qualified by the object reference along with a dot operator as shown below:

objreference.instancevar

where, objreference is the name of the variable holding the reference of the object and instancevar is the name of the instance variable associated with that object.

Note: Instance variables are initialized with the default values when the class is instantiated.

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