What is an instance?

Question

It is really confusing me i cant really imagine anything under an instance. Thanks for the help

Answer 1

object

Answer 2

You have classes and instances (of classes)

At first, your Class is like a blueprint (for example a car) and an instance is an object you created FROM the class.

Example with cars in C#:

//This is your blueprint (class)

class Car {
string manufacturer;
string color;
int power;
}

//This are your instances (objects)

new Car BMW;
new Car Audi;
new Car Subaru;

So basically an instance is an object from a class.

After instanciating you can access variables and methods from your instances with the "."-operator.

For Example:

Subaru.color = red;

Answer 3

to throw in a python reference as you tagged python:
class MyTestClass(object):
def __init__(self, name, age):
self.name = name
self.age = age

# just a function for an example
def older_than(self, age):
return True if age < self.age else False

john = MyTestClass('John', 34)
albert = MyTestClass('Albert', 21)

print(john.age) # Prints 34 to screen
print(albert.name) # prints Albert to screen

print(john.older_than(albert.age)) # prints True as John is older than Albert

Both 'albert' and 'john' are objects which are instances of the MyTestClass.
You can create as many instances of a class as you require.
the dot(.) notation is used to access members of the object instance. In this case each instance has a name and a age and also a function which compares their age to some other age. In our example we checked if john was older than albert. (ignore the return function for this if you are beginning i just kept it small not to pollute the example.)