As both encapsulation and abstraction relates to information hiding,can i mean encapsulation as a subset of abstraction?
+4
A:
Encapsulation is just one way of achieving abstraction.
'abstraction' is a concept, it is the idea of defining or understanding a particular 'thing' (whatever that may be) through its essential properties or behaviors.
'encapsulation' is a computer science technique used to produce classes which allow dealing with concrete objects in a fashion that reduces them to their abstract components.
In the domain of computer science, other techniques such as the use of graphs and other data structures are another way of providing abstraction for various underlying 'things', which even though they may not look anything like the graphs (or the matrices or other structures) have some of their essential characteristics embodied in these structures.
In other domains, abstraction can be achieved in very diverse fashion, such as the never ending classification process at work in the human brains, which creates and maintains "prototypes" (high level invariant representations) representing everyday concepts.
mjv
2009-10-05 04:12:47
+2
A:
Unfortunately, the three terms you mentioned above are often used somewhat interchangeably for better or for worse.
The term encapsulation is often used interchangeably with information hiding. Not all agree on the distinctions between the two though; one may think of information hiding as being the principle and encapsulation being the technique. A software module hides information by encapsulating the information into a module or other construct which presents an interface.
As to your specific question, I think the answer is no. Encapsulation is probably not best thought of as a subset of abstraction. Abstraction is more or less an ideal; encapsulation
the process of compartmentalizing the elements of an abstraction that constitute its structure and behavior
is a means to achieve a good abstraction.
Bob Albright
2009-10-05 04:16:08