Data Structures

Fall 2023

Kainat Iqbal
[email protected]

National University of Computer and Emerging

Sciences

1-Introduction 1
Some Rules

• Be respectful to others.

• Raise your hand before asking any question

– Wait for the permission

• Never ever miss a class

• Never use mobile phone in the class

1-Introduction 2
Attendance Policy

• Attendance:
– At least 80% attendance is required.
– It will be marked in the first 10 minutes.

• Student arriving after the attendance will be marked “late”

– No excuse to students arriving immediately after the attendance

• Two late arrivals will be treated as absent

1-Introduction 3
Dishonesty and Plagiarism

• Any kind of cheating will be considered serious offense.

• Plagiarism in project or midterm/ final exam may result in F grade

in the course.

• Plagiarism in an assignment will result in zero marks in the whole

assignments category.
– All parties involve in cheating will get zero marks

• I take academic integrity extremely seriously

– I offer great trust but with little sympathy for violations
– Honest work is a vital feature of a university

1-Introduction 4
Some Details

• You are expected to do your own work

– Exceptions (group work), if any, will be clearly announced

• Sharing solutions, doing work for, or accepting work from others is

cheating

• Referring to solutions from this or other courses from previous

quarters is cheating
– But you can learn from each other: see the policy

1-Introduction 5
Assumed Background

• Prerequisite is Object Oriented Programming

• Topics you should have a basic understanding of:

– Variables, conditionals, loops, methods, fundamentals of defining
classes and inheritance, arrays, recursion, some sorting and searching
algorithms, basic algorithm analysis (e.g., O(n) vs O(n2) and similar
things)

• We can fill in gaps as needed, but if any topics are new, plan on
some extra studying

1-Introduction 6
Course & Reference Books
• Data Structures Using C++ (By D.S. Malik)

• Data Structures Using C and C++ (By Y. Langsam, M. J. Augenstein,

A. M. Tenenbaum)

• Data Structures and Algorithms (By A. V. Aho, J. E. Hopcroft, J. D.

Ullman)

• Schaum's Outline Series, Theory and problems of Data Structures (By

Seymour Lipschutz)

1-Introduction 7
Google Classroom

64igi2i

1-Introduction 8
Tentative Evaluation Breakdown

Evaluation Name Weightage

Quiz 10
Assignment 15
Sessional I 12.5
Sessional II 12.5
Project 10
Final 40

1-Introduction 9
Course Content
• Introduction to data structures and abstract data types
• Arrays
• Background: Templates and Algorithm Analysis
• Searching and sorting techniques
• Linked Lists
• Queues
• Stacks
• Trees: Definitions and terminology
• Trees: Binary Search Trees, AVL Trees
• Heap
• Graphs
• B+ Trees
• Hashing

1-Introduction 10
General Overview

How to organize information/data, usually in

Data Structures memory, so that it can be used efficiently?

Algorithm How to analyze the performance of algorithms to

Analysis evaluate their suitability for solving complex
problems?

1-Introduction 11
What is a Data Structure?

• In a general sense, any representation that is used for storing

information is a data structure
– Example: integers, structures, classes, arrays, etc.

• More typically, a data structure provides a way for organizing a

collection of data items
– Storing, accessing and modifying data items

• Most data structures have associated algorithms to perform

operations on data
– Search, insert, remove etc.

1-Introduction 12
Costs and Benefits

• Each data structure requires

– Space for storing data items
– Time to perform each basic operation
– Programming efforts

• Cost of a data structure

– Time and space resources it consumes

• Choice of data structure depends on many factors

– Type of data
– Frequency with which various data operations are applied

• Hard to define data structure that performs better in all situations

– Time and space tradeoff
1-Introduction 13
Goals of This Course

• Learn the commonly used data structures

– Form a programmer’s basic data structure “toolkit”

• Case studies of data structures

• Examine the costs and benefits of every data structure

1-Introduction 14
Motivational Example

• A cellular service company provides contract to its 10 million users

• Due to new security enforcements, the company wants to prevent

issuing of multiple contracts to users

• Method of Detecting Multiple Contracts

– Before issuing a new contract to user
– First search the id of user in existing contracts database
– In case of failure  issue a new contract
– In case of success  do not issue a new contract to user

1-Introduction 15
Example: Linear Array Data Structure (1)

NIC# Name Address

6584495-9 Muhammad Faheem House No 3 Gulshan Bahar Sec 16
1748425-5 Naeem Alam A-11 Shams Plaza Block-B N.Nazimabad
0889679-1 Arslan Akhtar H No 152 Bostang Colony
3419668-1 Zain Ahmed Sharfabad Street Gulshan Karachi
3445864-3 Sumair Farooq Post Office Tayyar, Multan
6395653-4 Ali Affan H.No. 425, Sector F-11/4, Islamabad
8224641-1 Syed Faraz Sharfabad Street Gulshan, Faisalabad

• Linear Array (with 10 million entries)

– 3 arrays (NIC, Name, Address)
– Structured array
– Class’s object array

1-Introduction 16
 Example: Linear Array Data Structure (2)

New NIC# Name Address

Contract 6584495-9 Muhammad Faheem House No 3 Gulshan Bahar Sec 16
1748425-5 Naeem Alam A-11 Shams Plaza Block-B N.Nazimabad
0889679-1 Arslan Akhtar H No 152 Bostang Colony
3419668-1 Zain Ahmed Sharfabad Street Gulshan Karachi
3445864-3 Sumair Farooq Post Office Tayyar, Multan
6395653-4 Ali Affan H.No. 425, Sector F-11/4, Islamabad
8224641-1 Syed Faraz Sharfabad Street Gulshan, Faisalabad

Not Issue Issue

• Any disadvantage of linear array data structure?

• How to improve?

1-Introduction 17
Example: Improved Data Structure

• Create a dictionary data structure

– Group similar records together
– Similarity in terms of first digit of NIC number
– Add a dictionary entry for each distinct digit (0 – 9)

• Example: 3419668-1, 3445864-3, 1748425-5.

– 3 and 1 are dictionary entries

• Existing contracts are searched in two steps

1. Search the dictionary entry (i.e., group searching)
2. Search contract within the group (i.e., with the same NIC digit)

• How much improvement w.r.t. linear array?

1-Introduction 18
Example: Dictionary Data Structure (1)
NIC# Name Address
6584495-9 Muhammad Faheem House No 3 Gulshan Bahar Sec 16
1748425-5 Naeem Alam A-11 Shams Plaza Block-B N.Nazimabad
0889679-1 Arslan Akhtar H No 152 Bostang Colony
3419668-1 Zain Ahmed Sharfabad Street Gulshan Karachi
3445864-3 Sumair Farooq Post Office Tayyar, Multan
6395653-4 Ali Affan H.No. 425, Sector F-11/4, Islamabad
8224641-1 Syed Faraz Sharfabad Street Gulshan, Faisalabad

0 2

3 3 4

6 0 5

Dictionary Item Array Elements

1-Introduction 19
Example: Dictionary Data Structure (2)

• Another possibility
– Maintain pointers with structures (or records)
– Non NULL pointer indicates presence of next record

NIC# Name Address

0
6584495-9 Muhammad Faheem House No 3 Gulshan Bahar Sec 16
1748425-5 Naeem Alam A-11 Shams Plaza Block-B N.Nazimabad
3
0889679-1 Arslan Akhtar H No 152 Bostang Colony
3419668-1 Zain Ahmed Sharfabad Street Gulshan Karachi
6
3445864-3 Sumair Farooq Post Office Tayyar, Multan
6395653-4 Ali Affan H.No. 425, Sector F-11/4, Islamabad
8224641-1 Syed Faraz Sharfabad Street Gulshan, Faisalabad

1-Introduction 20
Practice Task

• Implement the example on the previous slides in C++ in two

different programs. In the first, implement the data structure as a
single array. In the second, implement the dictionary approach
where the data is indexed by the first digit of the CNIC. In both
programs, generate a random CNIC and search for it in your data
structure. Do this searching operation in a loop of 500, to simulate
500 searches.
• Now, one by one, run both programs and note the running time.
Use a Linux utility for checking the running time. Submit your
programs and your result of running time for both (in a separate
txt file).

1-Introduction 21
What is Data Structure Efficiency?

• Two major measures of efficiency of a data structure or algorithm

– Time and space

• Cost of data structure

– Time and space resources it consumes

• Efficiency of a data structure depends on its operations

– Makes a difference between program running in few seconds or days

• Difficult to define data structure that performs better in all

situations

1-Introduction 22
Abstract Data Types (1)

• A definition of data type solely in terms of

– Set of related data items (or values)
– Set of operations on the data

• Separation of logical properties from the implementation details

– Hide implementation details (Encapsulation!) User

• What not how is focus

Interface

Implementation

2-ADTs
Operations 23
Data Structures vs. ADT

• A data structure is physical implementation of an ADT

– Each operation associated with ADT is implemented by one or more
subroutines in the implementation

• Data structure usually refers to an organization of data in main

memory

• Example: Stack, or Queue are ADTs, but a C++ Queue

implemented in a particular class with particular functions is a
concrete data structure.

• The relationship between ADT and Data Structure is a bit like the
relationship between an interface (class.h file – tells WHAT is done)
and a class implementation (the class.cpp file – tells HOW it is
done).
2-ADTs 24
Array as an ADT

• An array is defined as
– Ordered collection of a fixed number of elements
– All elements are of the same data type

• Basic operations
– Direct access to each element in the array
– Values can be retrieved or stored in each element

3-Arrays ADT 25
C/C++ Implementation of an Array ADT

datatype arrayName[intExp];

As an ADT In C/C++
Ordered Index: 0,1,2, … SIZE-1
Fixed Size intExp is constant
Homogeneous dataType is the type of all elements
Direct Access Array subscripting operator [ ]

3-Arrays ADT 26
Summary

What is a data structure?

• In a general sense, any representation that is used for storing
information is a data structure
• Example: An integer, structures, classes, arrays, etc.
• More typically, a data structure provides a way for organizing a
collection of data items

Where is a data structure helpful?

• Data structure can make the difference between a program
running in a few seconds or many days
– Efficiency of data structure

• What is an ADT?
– A logical representation of a data structure.
0-Preliminaries 27
Any Question So Far?

1-Introduction 28