Question

Abstraction is a key part of object-oriented programming and the concepts apply particularly well to classes. How would the same concepts apply to data structures and how we tend to define and think of ADTs?

Answer 1

In object-oriented programming, abstraction is one of three central principles (along with encapsulation and inheritance). Through the process of abstraction, a programmer hides all but the relevant data about an object in order to reduce complexity and increase efficiency.Another important abstraction provided by a programming language is function. This abstraction allows programmers to group a set of instructions and give it a name. The named set of instructions may take one or more variables as input parameters, and return one or more values.Like all other abstractions, defining functions allow us to think at a higher conceptual level. By composing functions at increasingly higher level of abstractions, we can build programs with increasing level of complexity.Abstraction is selecting data from a larger pool to show only the relevant details to the object. It helps to reduce programming complexity and effort. In Java, abstraction is accomplished using Abstract classes and interfaces. It is one of the most important concepts of OOPs.A data abstraction is a mental model of what can be done to a collection of data. It deliberately excludes details of how to do it. We implement a data abstraction by. choosing an appropriate data structure - a specific construction of data, and. providing appropriate operations to manipulate that data.Data abstraction refers to providing only essential information to the outside world and hiding their background details, i.e., to represent the needed information in program without presenting the details.Abstract Data Type(ADT) is a data type, where only behavior is defined but not implementation. Opposite of ADT is Concrete Data Type (CDT), where it contains an implementation of ADT. Examples: Array, List, Map, Queue, Set, Stack, Table, Tree, and Vector are ADTs.Implementing an ADT means providing one procedure or function for each abstract operation. The ADT instances are represented by some concrete data structure that is manipulated by those procedures, according to the ADT's specifications.Usually there are many ways to implement the same ADT, using several different concrete data structures. Thus, for example, an abstract stack can be implemented by a linked list or by an array.