Encapsulation and information hiding in OOP summary notes

Object Oriented
Programming I

, Encapsulation and
Information Hiding

, Introduction
 Encapsulation and Information Hiding are two
fundamental, closely related concepts in Object-
Oriented Programming (OOP).
 Together, they form a crucial pillar of creating
robust, secure, and maintainable software.
 At its core, encapsulation is about bundling data
(attributes) and the methods (functions) that
operate on that data into a single unit, known as a
class.
 Think of it like a capsule that holds medicine;
the capsule protects the medicine and keeps it
together.
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SPC2204: Object Oriented Programming 1

, Introduction
 Similarly, encapsulation in programming holds
data and its functions together, protecting the
data from external, unauthorized access.
 This bundling gives rise to information hiding,
which is the practice of restricting access to
certain parts of an object's internal state.
 This prevents the internal implementation
details of a class from being exposed to the
outside world, thereby ensuring data integrity
and allowing for modifications to the internal
logic without affecting the external code that
uses the class.

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SPC2204: Object Oriented Programming 1