What is the difference between "attribute" and "property"? [closed]

Question

Could you please clear up the meaning of these two words for me?

I don't understand this sentence:

Attributes introduced by RDFA have names. For example, property is one such attribute.

Answer 1

Generally, attribute means a particular characteristic or ability which something or someone has, like curly hair or a short temper, or the ability to make really good coffee.
So an applicant for a job might be asked in an interview what attributes they have which would make them suitable.

Property would be used similarly, but usually in discussions of more abstract concepts, like an idea, a branch of mathematics or an economic policy.

E.g. What property of certain regular polygons allows them to be faces of the Platonic Solids?

But for the phrase you mention (the phrase comes from this PDF, a technical document explaining RDF technologies), attribute has a precise technical meaning. If you wanted to express in XML the idea of a kid with a short temper, you might write something like this:

<Kid temper="short"/>

Here the attribute is named "temper", and the value of that attribute is "short".

It's unfortunate that the example you quote suggests an attribute named property, because "attribute" and "property" are used interchangeably in discussions about XML. So when the paragraph you quoted continues with:

Obviously, when we make reference to this attribute, we say attribute property.

it starts to look confusing.

All I can add to clarify it here is to point out that in the code representation (an object in some programming language) we would call "temper" a property, but the corresponding thing in the XML is referred to as an attribute).

I think any further discussion of this really belongs on Stack Overflow.

Answer 2

Both words can be synonyms in one sense. But property may refer to one's belongings, which attribute cannot; and attribute may also be a verb, which is not true of property.

Answer 3

Wikipedia claims attributes are ascribable, whereas properties are possessable:

Quality (philosophy)

Answer 4

The Wikipedia article on Attribute (computing) describes attribute as a 'property of a property', which somewhat contradicts the RDFA example. At least there both terms are mentioned relative to one another. Having spelled out the above qualification though, the article goes on to describe some specific uses of the two terms in various computer languages, just to demonstrate how interchangeable they both are. My understanding is that attribute is the more formal and accepted term in the computer languages, while property is a more generalized, colloquial synonym with the same meaning.

In XML, for example, in the case of <Kid temper="short"/>, temper would be considered strictly an attribute of the <Kid> tag. If the same is expressed like this:

<Kid>
 <temper>
   short
 </temper>
</Kid>

that would be described as a property.

Answer 5

attributes and properties are the same, however, attribute of something is given by people and property is something the a things naturally possess. I think thus attribute can be used as a verb and property cannot. Both property and attribute can be used as a noun, but as a degree of how a thing earns it.

Answer 6

Look at the fact that attribute has a verb form (from which the noun derives) which would seem to indicate that a thing's attributes come about by virtue of their having been (as it were) bestowed...tending more to descriptive as opposed to strictly innate; and many if not most observed examples of the word's use, even still, bear that out.

A property (noun form only), on the other hand, is some quality which is intrinsic, so is more or less invariable--the invariability resting (for those who would pounce...) on the fact that variablity, itself, would also be a property. (Attributes can change [as if] by whim; properties only in strict accord with innate processes.)

Attribute, like many words, has, itself, the attributed quality of being in "vogue," owing to its greatly expanded "exposure," correctly or not, on the Web. Accordingly, it has grown largely to be deemed, for good or ill, an all-purpose synonym of property.