Talk:Attribute (programming)

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What's the difference between an attribute and a property in computing? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.169.216.194 (talk) 18:00, 24 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

The term attribute can and is often treated as equivalent to a property depending on the technology being discussed.

However, attributes might more correctly be considered metadata. An attribute is frequently a property of a property.

A good example is the process of XML assigning values to properties (elements). Note the element's value is typically found before the (separate) end tag, not in the element. However, note the element itself may have a number of attributes set (NAME="IAMAPROPERTY"). If the element in question could be considered a property (CUSTOMER_NAME) of another entity (lets say CUSTOMER), the element can have zero or more attributes (properties) of its own.

This would lead to the assertion that customers have properties, but a text button control has attributes. I would further assert that an attribute contains a value and while it can be, is not necessarily, an option. DHorse1 (talk) 23:28, 10 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

Should we not change the title into Attribute (computer science), conforming to similar articles? -DePiep 11:24, 30 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

For C#, the article contains a confusing or misleading claim: "With attributes, it is possible to extend attributes such as abstract, sealed, or public.<ref name="Attributes">"

You can't extend those built-in attributes. What the author of the linked presentation meant was that it's possible to add additional attributes, thus extending the set of usable attributes (like the in-built abstract, sealed, or public).

I'm deleting that whole sentence, feel free to rephrase and put it back in if you believe it has value. Relatively random (talk) 14:38, 9 June 2020 (UTC)Reply