<programming> (ADT) A type whose internal form is hidden behind a set of access functions. Objects 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.
Abstract data types are central to object-oriented programming where every class is an ADT.
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.
(22 Feb 1995)