Meaning – The word attribute means the characteristic that identifies or perfectly describes an entity. This includes every little minute detail about that entity, that explains what the entity is, how it behaves and how it is to be used. The attributes of an object or an entity can be determined or changed using methods that are recommended for that particular entity.
In the world of computers, attribute refers to information within a managed object that is visible at the object boundary. An attribute has a type, which indicates the range of information given by the attribute, and a value, which is within that range.
Each named attribute contains a set of rules that are called operations. Programmers have to follow these rules/operations when they are handling different objects with unique attributes. For example, a programmer cannot perform arithmetic operations on a string or process an integer array as an image object.
Example of usage – “The first thing that a programmer has to do is understand the various attributes and the corresponding operations”.