What does indeterministic behavior means?

Question

I saw this term used a lot in Joshua block's book effective java specialy on the item related to the method clone , so can some explain what does it means and examples of it ?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Indeterministic, or usually non-deterministic, system is a system that is not deterministic. Deterministic is described in Wikipedia as:

In mathematics [and computer science], a deterministic system is a system in which no randomness is involved in the development of future states of the system. A deterministic model will thus always produce the same output from a given starting condition or initial state.

In other words, non-deterministic system is one where there is no guarantee same input will always produce same output.