Behavioral pattern
Type of software design pattern
title: "Behavioral pattern" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["software-design-patterns"] description: "Type of software design pattern" topic_path: "technology/software-engineering" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_pattern" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary Type of software design pattern ::
A behavioral pattern is a software design pattern for collaboration between objects.
Examples
Examples include:
; Blackboard design pattern: Provides a computational framework for the design and implementation of systems that integrate large and diverse specialized modules, and implement complex, non-deterministic control strategies. ; Chain-of-responsibility pattern: Command objects are handled or passed on to other objects by logic-containing processing objects. ; Command pattern: Command objects encapsulate an action and its parameters. ; Externalize the stack: Turn a recursive function into an iterative function that uses a stack{{cite web |url = http://c2.com/ |title = Externalize The Stack |date = 2010-01-19 |publisher = c2.com |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20110303085751/http://c2.com/ |archive-date = 2011-03-03 |access-date = 2012-05-21 |url-status = bot: unknown ; Interpreter pattern: Implement a specialized computer language to rapidly solve a specific set of problems. ; Iterator pattern: Iterators are used to access the elements of an aggregate object sequentially without exposing its underlying representation. ; Mediator pattern: Provides a unified interface to a set of interfaces in a subsystem. ; Memento pattern: Provides the ability to restore an object to its previous state (rollback). ; Null object pattern: Acts as a default value of an object. ; Observer pattern: Defines a one-to-many dependency between objects so that when one object changes state, all its dependents are notified and updated automatically. The variant weak reference pattern decouples an observer from an observable to avoid memory leaks in environments without automatic weak references. ; Protocol stack: Communications are handled by multiple layers, which form an encapsulation hierarchy{{cite web |url = http://c2.com/ |title = Protocol Stack |date = 2006-09-05 |publisher = c2.com |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20110303085751/http://c2.com/ |archive-date = 2011-03-03 |access-date = 2012-05-21 |url-status = bot: unknown ; Publish–subscribe patternA messaging pattern where senders (publishers) and receivers (subscribers) are decoupled via message topics and brokers. Commonly used in distributed systems, this pattern supports asynchronous, many-to-many communication. ; Scheduled-task pattern: A task is scheduled to be performed at a particular interval or clock time (used in real-time computing). ; Single-serving visitor pattern: Optimise the implementation of a visitor that is allocated, used only once, and then deleted. ; Specification pattern: Recombinable business logic in a boolean fashion. ; State pattern: A clean way for an object to partially change its type at runtime. ; Strategy pattern: Algorithms can be selected on the fly, using composition. ; Template method pattern: Describes the skeleton of a program; algorithms can be selected on the fly, using inheritance. ; Visitor pattern: A way to separate an algorithm from an object.
References
References
- Nakashian, Ashod. (2004-04-11). "Weak Reference Pattern". c2.com.
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