@abstract

The @abstract tag declares the element it decorates as abstract — a docblock-level stand-in for PHP's native abstract keyword, for use where that keyword cannot actually be written: a magic member introduced through @method or @property, for instance, has no native declaration to modify. It also sees occasional use on a real abstract class or method simply to make the fact more visible in generated documentation.

Parsing an @abstract tag produces an AbstractTag instance. Being a pure marker, it adds nothing beyond the $name and optional $description every Tag already carries.

@abstract belongs to the original phpDocumentor tag vocabulary, but phpDocumentor 3 has since dropped it entirely: it is absent from the current 27-tag reference index, and no tags/abstract.html page exists any longer. Only the archived phpDocumentor 1.x manual still describes it, as a legacy reference rather than current documentation — phpDocumentor 1.x manual, archived. This component still parses @abstract for compatibility with docblocks written against that classic toolchain.