What is an abstract data type in object oriented programming? I've gone through the wiki for this topic, but I am still unclear about it. Could someone clarify?
20 Answers
Abstract Data Type (ADT) is a mathematical model with a collection of operations defined on that model.
Also, ADT is a data type whose behavior is defined by set of values and set of operations.
From this post:
ADT is a set of objects and operations, no where in an ADT’s definitions is there any mention of how the set of operations is implemented. Programmers who use collections only need to know how to instantiate and access data in some pre-determined manner, without concerns for the details of the collections implementations. In other words, from a user’s perspective, a collection is an abstraction, and for this reason, in computer science, some collections are referred to as abstract data types (ADTs). The user is only concern with learning its interface, or the set of operations its performs.
Object such as lists, sets and graphs along with their operations can be viewed as abstract data types. ADTs are basically data types that hides its implementation details. Any part of a program that needs to perform an operation on ADT can do so by merely changing the routines that performs the ADT operations. The program that use them (ADT) will not necessarily need to know which implementation was used
It is just like an interface. Abstract data type in a class is just used to define something i.e. Without body/implementation such as abstract methods. The body will be added where that class will be inherited. The difference between interface and Abstract class is that we can not add a method with body in interface where as in abstract class, we can add methods/variables with body/value or make it abstract(i.e. Define there and implement where it is overrided).
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