Chapter 19 Flashcards
abstract data type (ADT)
A data type (usually a collection of objects) that is defined by a set of operations but that can be implemented in a variety of ways.
interface
The set of operations that define an ADT.
implementation
Code that satisfies the syntactic and semantic requirements of an interface.
client
A program (or the person who wrote it) that uses an ADT.
provider
The code (or the person who wrote it) that implements an ADT.
veneer
A class definition that implements an ADT with method definitions that are invocations of other methods, sometimes with simple transformations. The veneer does no significant work, but it improves or standardizes the interface seen by the client.
generic data structure
A kind of data structure that can contain data of any type.
infix
A way of writing mathematical expressions with the operators between the operands.
postfix
A way of writing mathematical expressions with the operators after the operands.
parse
To read a string of characters or tokens and analyze its grammatical structure.
token
A set of characters that are treated as a unit for purposes of parsing, such as the words in a natural language.
delimiter
A character that is used to separate tokens, such as punctuation in a natural language.