Core C++ A Software Engineering Approach

Information Hiding

The concept of information hiding is also related to the principle of separation of concerns. Normally, without information hiding, the programmer who writes the code (or the person who maintains the code) has to keep in mind two sets of design decisions, or two sets of knowledge, simultaneously. One set of knowledge and concerns is about the design of data (e.g., type Cylinder), and another set of knowledge is about the application-related manipulation of data (setting fields, comparing volumes, scaling sizes, etc.).

With information hiding, the areas of concern are separate. The programmer who writes (or maintains) the client code is concerned only with application-related manipulations of data, not with data design. The ...