A passage from a given initial thermodynamic state to a given final thermodynamic state of a thermodynamic system is known as a thermodynamic process; usually this is transfer of matter or energy between system and surroundings. In any thermodynamic process, whatever may be the intermediate conditions during the passage, the total respective change in the value of each thermodynamic state variable depends only on the initial and final states. For an idealized continuous or quasi-static process, this means that infinitesimal incremental changes in such variables are exact differentials. Together, the incremental changes throughout the process, and the initial and final states, fully determine the idealized process.