What is "late binding"

n. (context programming English) dynamic binding.

Late binding, or dynamic binding, is a computer programming mechanism in which the method being called upon an object or the function being called with arguments is looked up by name at runtime.

With early binding, or static binding, in an object-oriented language, the compilation phase fixes all types of variables and expressions. This is usually stored in the compiled program as an offset in a virtual method table ("v-table") and is very efficient. With late binding the compiler does not have enough information to verify the method even exists, let alone bind to its particular slot on the v-table. Instead the method is looked up by name at runtime.

The primary advantage of using late binding in Component Object Model (COM) programming is that it does not require the compiler to reference the libraries that contain the object at compile time. This makes the compilation process more resistant to version conflicts, in which the class's v-table may be accidentally modified. (This is not a concern in JIT-compiled platforms such as .NET or Java, because the v-table is created at runtime by the virtual machine against the libraries as they are being loaded into the running application.)