In object-oriented programming, a method is a subroutine (or procedure) associated with a class. Methods define the behavior to be exhibited by instances of the associated class at program run time. Methods have the special property that at runtime, they have access to data stored in an instance of the class (or class instance or class object or object) they are associated with and are thereby able to control the state of the instance. The association between class and method is called binding. A method associated with a class is said to be bound to the class. Methods can be bound to a class at compile time (static binding) or to an object at runtime (dynamic binding)