Saturday, May 7, 2011

ADT (Abstract Data Types)

What is an abstract data type? An abstract data type (ADT) is a data type defined only in terms of the operations that may be performed on objects of the type. Users (programmers) are allowed to examine and manipulate objects using only these operations and they are unaware of how the objects are implemented in the programming language.

"An Abstract Data Type (ADT) is a data structure and a collection of functions or procedures which operate on the data structure. "

Data Type vs Abstract Data Type :
A Data Type is characterized by
- a set of values
- a data representation, which is common to all these values
- a set of operations, which can be applied uniformly to all these values.

where as an Abstract Data Type is characterized by
- a set of values
- a set of operations, which can be applied uniformly to all these values
- it won't give the external access to the data representation

Abstract Data Type (ADT) sim­pli­fies the task of spec­i­fy­ing an algo­rithm by abstracting the details of it. So, the end user no need to worry, how it is implemented.

In simple Java or C# terms, It's just a Class.

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