ALL meanings of abstract data type
- noun Technical meaning of abstract data type (programming) (ADT) A kind of data abstraction where a type's internal form is hidden behind a set of access functions. Values of the type are created and inspected only by calls to the access functions. This allows the implementation of the type to be changed without requiring any changes outside the module in which it is defined. A classic example of an ADT is a stack data type for which functions might be provided to create an empty stack, to push values onto a stack and to pop values from a stack. 1
- noun abstract data type (computing) A data type defined only by data properties and operations to be performed on the data without any specification as to how the data will be represented or the operations performed. 0