abstract data type

In computing, an abstract data type (ADT) is a specification of a set of data and the set of operations that can be performed on the data. Such a data type is abstract in the sense that it is independent of various concrete implementations. The definition can be mathematical, or it can be programmed as an interface. The interface provides a constructor, which returns an abstract handle to new data, and several operations, which are functions accepting the abstract handle as an argument.
See more at Wikipedia.org...

<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.
Objects and ADTs are both forms of data abstraction, but objects are not ADTs. Objects use procedural abstraction (methods), not type abstraction.
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.
Reynolds paper.
Cook paper "OOP vs ADTs".
(2003-07-03)