How is abstract class different from concrete class?

Asked 12 years, 7 months ago Modified 4 years, 6 months ago Viewed 46k times

I understand WHY we need Abstract Class in Java - to create sub-classes. But the same can be
achieved by concrete class. e.g. Class Child extends Parent. Here Parent can very well be
25 abstract & concrete. So why do we have ABSTRACT??

java class abstract

Share Improve this question Follow asked Apr 18, 2012 at 14:17
Ashish K Agarwal
1,172 3 18 34

9 Animal animal = new Animal(); << what animal? in many cases this doesn't make sense, hence
abstract classes. You can't create an instance directly. It has to be a subtype like a cat or dog or
whatever – Polity Apr 18, 2012 at 14:19

2 programmatically the same can be achieved if we would have had Animal as a concrete class. I am
just trying to understand the rationale behind introducing a concept of ABSTRACT by the java
creators. – Ashish K Agarwal Apr 18, 2012 at 14:23

It limits the redundancy of the code and also increases the effectiveness. Moreover it can impose that
certain incomplete functionality of the abstract class be used in the concrete class. Much like
combining an interface and class together and you don't have to implement the interface in all your
concrete classes. – Nitin Chhajer Apr 18, 2012 at 14:27

7 Answers Sorted by: Highest score (default)

Abstract classes cannot be instantiated directly. Declaring a class as abstract means that you
do not want it to be instantiated and that the class can only be inherited. You are imposing a
56 rule in your code.

If you extend your Parent/Child relationship example further to include a Person class then it
would make good sense for Person to be abstract. Parent is a concrete idea and so is child.
Person is an abstract concept in reality as well as in code.

One benefit is that you explicitly define and protect the idea of the abstract class. When you
declare a class as an abstract there's no way that you or anyone else using your code uses it
incorrectly by instantiating it. This reasoning is similar to why we specify functions and fields
as public, private or protected. If you declare a function or member as private you are in
effect protecting it from improper access from client code. Privates are meant to be used
within the class and that's it. Abstract classes are meant to be inherited and that's that.
Now, do you have to use abstract classes and define functions and fields as private instead of
public? No, you don't. But these concepts are provided to help keep code clean and well-
organized. The abstract class is implemented in all object-oriented languages to my
knowledge. If you look around you will see that C++, C#, VB.NET etc. all use this concept.

A better, specific example:

In the example above the Shape class should be abstract because it is not useful on its own.

Share Improve this answer Follow edited Apr 18, 2012 at 14:52 answered Apr 18, 2012 at 14:19
Paul Sasik
81.3k 23 151 190

2 but what benefit do we gain by imposing this rule? – Ashish K Agarwal Apr 18, 2012 at 14:21

2 Code reuse. Implement the function in the abstract class and now all subclasses have that method
implemented. This is commonly used when implementing interfaces and multiple implementations
share the same code for some methods. – Colin D Apr 18, 2012 at 14:22

1 I think Parent / Child / Person is a bad analogy for explaining abstraction and inheritance: a person is
always a child (of two other persons) and it is very common that after a point in time they are also a
parent (of some other person(s)). – Mark Rotteveel Apr 18, 2012 at 14:41

3 @MarkRotteveel: I agree. That's an analogy often taught in CS classes and it does not make a great
deal of sense. A better example is shapes IMO. If creating an app that draws shapes it would make
perfect sense to create an abstract class Shape. From it you would inherit and create Rectangles,
Circles etc. and it would never make sense to instantiate a Shape. – Paul Sasik Apr 18, 2012 at 14:44
 Abstract class means it is abstract not complete. It needs another class to complete it and/or
its functionalities. You need to extend the abstract class. It will be useful with Certain class eg.
10 Fruit all fruits have the same property like color. But you can have different properties for
different fruits like is it pulpy such as orange or not eg Banana etc.

Share Improve this answer Follow answered Apr 18, 2012 at 14:23
Nitin Chhajer
2,339 3 24 35

1 but the point is the same can be achieved by a concrete class. I am trying to understand if there is
anything beyond the fact that abstract class is there for classes which are LOGICALLY not concrete or
is there something more ? – Ashish K Agarwal Apr 18, 2012 at 14:28

1 In that case the answer is no. You can have your entire app (even 100KLOC+) in one class. But we
don't, and we make different classes for different entities. Abstract class improves the structure of the
program – Nitin Chhajer Apr 18, 2012 at 14:30

I know this is an old question but it looks like the poster still had some questions about the
benefit of using an abstract class.
4
If you're the only one who will ever use your code then there really is no benefit. However, if
you're writing code for others to use there is a benefit. Let's say for example you've written a
caching framework but want to allow clients to create their own caching implementation
classes. You also want to keep track of some metrics, like how many caches are open,
hypothetically. Your abstract class might look something like this:

public abstract class AbstractCache {

public final void open() {
... // Do something here to log your metrics
openImpl();
}

protected abstract void openImpl() { }

}

On its own the AbstractCache class is useless and you don't want clients to try to instantiate
one and use it as a cache, which they would be able to do if the class was concrete. You also
want to make sure they can't bypass your metric logging, which they would be able to do if
you just provided them a Cache interface.

Share Improve this answer Follow edited Mar 3, 2014 at 20:37 answered Sep 25, 2013 at 19:17
Mike B
5,441 2 25 45
 The point of abstraction is not to create sub-classes. It's more about creating Seams in your
code. You want code to be test-able and decoupled which lead to the ultimate goal of
3 maintainability. For similar reasons, abstraction also buys us the ability to replace a bit of
code without rippling side effects.

Share Improve this answer Follow answered Apr 18, 2012 at 14:25
P.Brian.Mackey
44.1k 71 246 356

An abstract class is meant to be used as the base class from which other classes are derived.
The derived class is expected to provide implementations for the methods that are not
3 implemented in the base class. A derived class that implements all the missing functionality is
called a concrete class

Share Improve this answer Follow answered Jul 22, 2016 at 5:38
Hardik Chudasama
81 4

According to my understanding

Abstract Class is a class which just describes the behavior but doesn’t implement it. Consider
0
this Java example for Abstract Class:

public interface DoSomething (){

public void turnOnTheLight() ;
}

Concrete Classes are those, which are to be implemented. For Example:

public abstract class A (){

public void doIt() ;
}
public class B extends A (){
public void doIt() {
//concrete method
System.out.println(“I am a Concrete Class Test”);
}
}

In other words, A concrete class in java is any such class which has implementation of all of its
inherited members either from interface or abstract class.

Share Improve this answer Follow answered Jun 1, 2017 at 14:18

Devanshi
77 1 10
 For those who seek only differences in pure technical approach, the clearest difference
between concrete parent classes and abstract parent classes is the obligation for children to
0 include/implement specific methods.

A concrete parent class cannot force/oblige its children to include/implement a method. An

abstract parent class oblige its children to do that by declaring abstract methods.

Apart from the above, it comes to design and functional requirements to dictate the use of
abstract class. Such examples can be found on javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet class

Share Improve this answer Follow answered Apr 30, 2020 at 21:47
Nikos Stais
116 6