Data Structures

One way to look at a computer program is to think of it as a list of instructions that the computer should follow. However, in another sense, many computer programs are simply ways to manipulate data to achieve a desired result. We’ve already written many programs that do this, from calculating the minimum and maximum values of a list of numbers, to storing and retrieving data about students and teachers in a school.

As we start to consider our programs as simply ways to manipulate data, we may quickly realize that we are performing the same actions over and over again, or even treating data in many similar ways. Over time, these ideas have become the basis for several common data structures that we may use in our programs.

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Data Structure

Broadly speaking, a data structure is any part of our program that stores data using a particular format or method. Typically data structures define how the data is arranged, how it is added to the structure, how it can be removed, and how it can be accessed.

Data structures can give us very useful ways to look at how our data is organized. In addition, a data structure may greatly impact how easy, or difficult, it can be to perform certain actions with the data. Finally, data structures also impose performance limitations on our code. Some structures may be better at performing a particular operation than others, so we may have to consider that as well when choosing a data structure for our program.

In this class, we’ll spend the majority of our time learning about these common data structures, as well as algorithmic techniques that work well with each one. By formalizing these structures and techniques, we are able to build a common set of building blocks that every programmer is familiar with, making it much easier to build programs that others can understand and reuse.

First, let’s review some of these common data structures and see how they could be useful in our programs.