Software package (programming)

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A software package is used in object-oriented programming to name a group of related classes of a program. Packages are useful to measure and control the inherent coupling of a program.

In a modular program, even outside object-oriented programming, a software package may refer to any component (module) that can be integrated into the main program. Typically this is done by the end user in a well-defined interface. In other contexts the integration must occur at source code level of a given programming language.

An example of a package is the java.io package which contains or groups together all the classes in the Java programming language that aid input and output of data, such as the buffered reader class which is used to accept user input from the keyboard.