Information hiding

In computer science, information hiding is the principle of segregation of the design decisions in a computer program that are most likely to change, thus protecting other parts of the program from extensive modification if the design decision is changed.

See Separation of concerns.

Description

The protection involves providing a stable interface which protects the remainder of the program from the implementation (the details that are most likely to change).

Written another way, information hiding is the ability to prevent certain aspects of a class or software component from being accessible to its clients, using either programming language features (like private variables) or an explicit exporting policy.

See also

• Compartmentalization (information security)
• Implementation inheritance
• Inheritance semantics
• Law of Demeter
• Modularity (programming)
• Opaque data type
• Scope (programming)
• Separation of concerns
• Transparency (human–computer interaction)
• Virtual inheritance

External links

• Information hiding @ Wikipedia