Difference between Encapsulation and Abstraction
I had an interview today. I had a question from OOP, about the difference between Encapsulation & Abstraction?
I replied her to my knowledge that Encapsulation is basically to bind data members & member functions into a single unit called Class. Whereas Abstraction is basically to hide complexity of implementation & provide ease of access to the users. I thought she would be fine with my answer. But she queried, if the purpose of both are to hide information then what is the actual difference between these two? I could not give any answer to her.
Before asking this question, I read other threads on StackOverFlow about the difference between these two OOPs concepts. But I am not finding my self in a position to convince the interviewer.
Can anyone please justify it with a simplest example?
Answer
Encapsulate hides variables or some implementation that may be changed so often in a class to prevent outsiders access it directly. They must access it via getter and setter methods.
Abstraction is used to hiding something too but in a higher degree(class, interface). Clients use an abstract class(or interface) do not care about who or which it was, they just need to know what it can do.