Editing Object lifetime (section)

{{Short description|Time period between the creation and destruction of an object-oriented programming instance}}
{{Refimprove|date=January 2013}}

In [[object-oriented programming]] (OOP), '''object lifetime''' is the period of time between an [[object (computing)|object's]] [[Instance (computer science)#Object-oriented_programming|creation]] and its destruction. In some programming contexts, object lifetime coincides with the [[variable lifetime|lifetime]] of a [[Variable (computer science)|variable]] that represents the object. In other contexts {{endash}} where the object is accessed by [[Reference (computer science)|reference]] {{endash}} object lifetime is not determined by the lifetime of a variable. For example, destruction of the variable may only destroy the reference; not the referenced object.