Recorded information or a stream of data in plain or encrypted language put in a format specified for transmission in a telecommunication system. In the computer field, certain object-oriented programming languages such as Smalltalk and Objective-C use messages—actually instructions to an object—to perform particular tasks. In this context, a message is similar to a member function. In the Objective-C runtime environment, messages can still be forwarded even if an object does not recognize (that is, respond to) a particular message.

See Also: Programming Languages C++, C++, Perl, and Java.