Binding time - a brief

Computer software development involves a lot of coding and programming. The designing and programming effort is more in the field of custom software development as it requires the custom software development services to develop entirely new and customized software catering to the needs of the client. Out of the various concepts of programming, a lesser known one is binding.

Binding and the need for Binding

In programming, a binding is the association of between two things. The simplest example of binding should be the association between the name of the object and the object. There are many more examples of binding like control abstraction and data abstraction.

Naming: It is the process in which the programmer associates or assigns a name to a potentially complicated part of the program or code.

Control abstraction: It aids the programmer in hiding a complex code underneath a simple interface. Eg.: Subroutines, classes.

Data abstraction: It helps the programmer to hide the details of data representation behind certain abstract operation. E.g. Classes, ADT’s.

The goal behind the three associations mentioned is pretty much the same, which is to hide complexity, organize and standardize programming.

Binding time

In programming, binding time is a time at which decisions are made pertaining to binding of an object. Binding time can also be defined as the time at which binding is created (If the decision is to do it).In programming, there are various points of time at which binding occurs, like:

* Language implementation.
* Language design time.
* Program writing time.
* Compile time
* Link time.
* Load time
* Run time and so on.

Static, late static and dynamic binding

In general, the various binding can be categorized to static binding, late static binding and dynamic binding.

Static binding or early binding includes the binding of names that occurs before a program is run i.e. during the compilation or load processes. For example, in the case of a direct C function call the function called by the identifier cannot be changed during runtime.

Dynamic binding are bindings that are performed when the program runs. An example of this is dynamic dispatch, a virtual call in C++.

Late static binding is a variant of binding that falls somewhere between dynamic and static binding. Late static binding is supported by PHP version 5.3 and above. Importance of binding time

Binding time is a fundamental design decision and thus, has a crucial impact in programming languages. In general, early binding is associated with higher efficiency and late binding is associated with greater flexibility.