MODULE 1: INTRODUCTION

DATA STRUCTURES
Data may be organized in many different ways. The logical or mathematical model of a
particular organization of data is called a data structure.

The choice of a particular data model depends on the two considerations

1. It must be rich enough in structure to mirror the actual relationships of the data in the
real world.
2. The structure should be simple enough that one can effectively process the data
whenever necessary.

Basic Terminology: Elementary Data Organization:

Data: Data are simply values or sets of values.

Data items: Data items refers to a single unit of values.

Data items that are divided into sub-items are called Group items. Ex: An Employee Name
may be divided into three subitems- first name, middle name, and last name.

Data items that are not able to divide into sub-items are called Elementary items.
Ex: SSN

Entity: An entity is something that has certain attributes or properties which may be assigned
values. The values may be either numeric or non-numeric.
Ex: Attributes- Names, Age, Sex, SSN
Values- Rohland Gail, 34, F, 134-34-5533

Entities with similar attributes form an entity set. Each attribute of an entity set has a range of
values, the set of all possible values that could be assigned to the particular attribute.
The term “information” is sometimes used for data with given attributes, of, in other words
meaningful or processed data.

Field is a single elementary unit of information representing an attribute of an entity.

Record is the collection of field values of a given entity.

File is the collection of records of the entities in a given entity set.

Each record in a file may contain many field items but the value in a certain field may uniquely
determine the record in the file. Such a field K is called a primary key and the values k1, k2,
….. in such a field are called keys or key values.

Records may also be classified according to length.

A file can have fixed-length records or variable-length records.
 In fixed-length records, all the records contain the same data items with the same amount
of space assigned to each data item.
 In variable-length records file records may contain different lengths.

Example: Student records have variable lengths, since different students take different numbers
of courses. Variable-length records have a minimum and a maximum length.

The above organization of data into fields, records and files may not be complex enough to
maintain and efficiently process certain collections of data. For this reason, data are also organized
into more complex types of structures.

The study of complex data structures includes the following three steps:
1. Logical or mathematical description of the structure
2. Implementation of the structure on a computer
3. Quantitative analysis of the structure, which includes determining the amount of
memory needed to store the structure and the time required to process the structure.

CLASSIFICATION OF DATA STRUCTURES

Data structures are generally classified into

 Primitive data Structures
 Non-primitive data Structures

1. Primitive data Structures: Primitive data structures are the fundamental data types which
are supported by a programming language. Basic data types such as integer, real, character and
Boolean are known as Primitive data Structures. These data types consists of characters that
cannot be divided and hence they also called simple data types.

2. Non- Primitive data Structures: Non-primitive data structures are those data structures which
are created using primitive data structures. Examples of non-primitive data structures is the
processing of complex numbers, linked lists, stacks, trees, and graphs.
Based on the structure and arrangement of data, non-primitive data structures is further
classified into
1. Linear Data Structure
2. Non-linear Data Structure

1. Linear Data Structure:

A data structure is said to be linear if its elements form a sequence or a linear list. There are
basically two ways of representing such linear structure in memory.
1. One way is to have the linear relationships between the elements represented by means
of sequential memory location. These linear structures are called arrays.
2. The other way is to have the linear relationship between the elements represented by
means of pointers or links. These linear structures are called linked lists.

The common examples of linear data structure are Arrays, Queues, Stacks, Linked lists

2. Non-linear Data Structure:

A data structure is said to be non-linear if the data are not arranged in sequence or a linear. The
insertion and deletion of data is not possible in linear fashion. This structure is mainly used to
represent data containing a hierarchical relationship between elements. Trees and graphs are the
examples of non-linear data structure.

Arrays:
The simplest type of data structure is a linear (or one dimensional) array. A list of a finite
number n of similar data referenced respectively by a set of n consecutive numbers, usually 1,
2, 3 . . . . . . . n. if A is chosen the name for the array, then the elements of A are denoted by
subscript notation a1, a2, a3….. an
or
by the parenthesis notation A (1), A (2), A (3) ............. A (n)
or
by the bracket notation A [1], A [2], A [3] ............. A [n]

Example 1: A linear array STUDENT consisting of the names of six students is pictured in
below figure. Here STUDENT [1] denotes John Brown, STUDENT [2] denotes Sandra
Gold, and so on.
Linear arrays are called one-dimensional arrays because each element in such an array is referenced
by one subscript. A two-dimensional array is a collection of similar data elements where each
element is referenced by two subscripts.

Example 2: A chain of 28 stores, each store having 4 departments, may list its weekly sales as in
below fig. Such data can be stored in the computer using a two-dimensional array in which the
first subscript denotes the store and the second subscript the department. If SALES is the name
given to the array, then
SALES [1, 1] = 2872, SALES [1, 2] - 805, SALES [1, 3] = 3211,…., SALES [28, 4] = 982

Trees
Data frequently contain a hierarchical relationship between various elements. The data structure
which reflects this relationship is called a rooted tree graph or a tree.
Some of the basic properties of tree are explained by means of examples

Example 1: Record Structure

Although a file may be maintained by means of one or more arrays a record, where one indicates
both the group items and the elementary items, can best be described by means of a tree structure.
For example, an employee personnel record may contain the following data items:
Social Security Number, Name, Address, Age, Salary, Dependents

However, Name may be a group item with the sub-items Last, First and MI (middle initial). Also
Address may be a group item with the subitems Street address and Area address, where Area itself
may be a group item having subitems City, State and ZIP code number.
This hierarchical structure is pictured below
Another way of picturing such a tree structure is in terms of levels, as shown below

Some of the data structures are briefly described below.

1. Stack: A stack, also called a fast-in first-out (LIFO) system, is a linear list in which insertions
and deletions can take place only at one end, called the top. This structure is similar in its operation
to a stack of dishes on a spring system as shown in fig.
Note that new 4 dishes are inserted only at the top of the stack and dishes can be deleted only from
the top of the Stack.
2. Queue: A queue, also called a first-in first-out (FIFO) system, is a linear list in which deletions
can take place only at one end of the list, the "from'' of the list, and insertions can take place only
at the other end of the list, the “rear” of the list.
This structure operates in much the same way as a line of people waiting at a bus stop, as pictured
in Fig. the first person in line is the first person to board the bus. Another analogy is with
automobiles waiting to pass through an intersection the first car in line is the first car through.

3. Graph: Data sometimes contain a relationship between pairs of elements which is not
necessarily hierarchical in nature. For example, suppose an airline flies only between the cities
connected by lines in Fig. The data structure which reflects this type of relationship is called a
graph.
DATA STRUCTURES OPERATIONS
The data appearing in data structures are processed by means of certain operations. The
following four operations play a major role in this text:
1. Traversing: accessing each record/node exactly once so that certain items in the record may
be processed. (This accessing and processing is sometimes called “visiting” the record.)
2. Searching: Finding the location of the desired node with a given key value, or finding the
locations of all such nodes which satisfy one or more conditions.
3. Inserting: Adding a new node/record to the structure.
4. Deleting: Removing a node/record from the structure.

The following two operations, which are used in special situations:

1. Sorting: Arranging the records in some logical order (e.g., alphabetically according to some
NAME key, or in numerical order according to some NUMBER key, such as social security
number or account number)
2. Merging: Combining the records in two different sorted files into a single sorted file.

ARRAYS
 An Array is defined as, an ordered set of similar data items. All the data items of an
array are stored in consecutive memory locations.
 The data items of an array are of same type and each data items can be accessed using
the same name but different index value.
 An array is a set of pairs, <index, value >, such that each index has a value associated
with it. It can be called as corresponding or a mapping
Ex: <index, value>
< 0 , 25 > list[0]=25
< 1 , 15 > list[1]=15
< 2 , 20 > list[2]=20
< 3 , 17 > list[3]=17
< 4 , 35 > list[4]=35

Here, list is the name of array. By using, list [0] to list [4] the data items in list can be
accessed.

Array in C
Declaration: A one dimensional array in C is declared by adding brackets to the name of a
variable.
Ex: int list[5], *plist[5];
  The array list[5], defines 5 integers and in C array start at index 0, so list[0], list[1],
list[2], list[3], list[4] are the names of five array elements which contains an integer
value.
 The array *plist[5], defines an array of 5 pointers to integers. Where, plist[0], plist[1],
plist[2], plist[3], plist[4] are the five array elements which contains a pointer to an
integer.

Implementation:
 When the complier encounters an array declaration, list[5], it allocates five consecutive
memory locations. Each memory is enough large to hold a single integer.
 The address of first element of an array is called Base Address. Ex: For list[5] the
address of list[0] is called the base address.
 If the memory address of list[i] need to compute by the compiler, then the size of the
int would get by sizeof (int), then memory address of list[i] is as follows:

list[i] = α + i * sizeof (int)

Where, α is base address.

Difference between int *list1; & int list2[5];

The variables list1 and list2 are both pointers to an int, but in list2[5] five memory locations
are reserved for holding integers. list2 is a pointer to list2[0] and list2+i is a pointer to list2[i].
Note: In C the offset i do not multiply with the size of the type to get to the appropriate
element of the array. Hence (list2+i) is equal &list2[i] and *(list2+i) is equal to list2[i].

How C treats an array when it is parameter to a function?

 All parameters of a C functions must be declared within the function. As various

parameters are passed to functions, the name of an array can be passed as parameter.
 The range of a one-dimensional array is defined only in the main function since new
storage for an array is not allocated within a function.
 If the size of a one dimensional array is needed, it must be passed into function as a
argument or accessed as a global variable.

Example: Array Program

#define MAX_SIZE 100

float sum(float [], int);
float input[MAX_SIZE], answer;
void main(void)
{
int i;
for( i=0; i<MAX_SIZE; i++)
input[i]= i;
answer = sum(input, MAX_SIZE);
printf(“\n The sum is: %f \n”,answer);
}

float sum(float list[], int n)

{
int i;
float tempsum = 0;
for(i=0; i<n; i++)
tempsum = tempsum + list[i];
return tempsum;
}
When sum is invoked, input=&input[0] is copied into a temporary location and associated
with the formal parameter list
A function that prints out both the address of the ith element of the array and the value found
at that address can written as shown in below program.

void print1 (int *ptr, int rows)

{
int i;
printf(“ Address contents \n”);
for(i=0; i<rows; i++)
printf(“% 8u %5d \n”, ptr+i, *(prt+i));
printf(“\n”);
}

Output:
Address Content
12244868 0
12344872 1
12344876 2
12344880 3
12344884 4

POINTERS
A pointer is a variable which contains the address in memory of another variable.
The two most important operator used with the pointer type are
& - The unary operator & which gives the address of a variable
* - The indirection or dereference operator * gives the content of the object pointed to
by a pointer.

Declaration
int i, *pi;

Here, i is the integer variable and pi is a pointer to an integer

pi = &i;
Here, &i returns the address of i and assigns it as the value of pi
Null Pointer
The null pointer points to no object or function.
The null pointer is represented by the integer 0.
The null pointer can be used in relational expression, where it is interpreted as false.

Ex: if (pi = = NULL) or if (!pi)

Pointers can be Dangerous:

Pointer can be very dangerous if they are misused. The pointers are dangerous in following
situations:
1. Pointer can be dangerous when an attempt is made to access an area of memory that is either
out of range of program or that does not contain a pointer reference to a legitimate object.
Ex: main ()
{
int *p;
int pa = 10;
p = &pa;
printf(“%d”, *p); //output = 10;
printf(“%d”, *(p+1)); //accessing memory which is out of range
}
2. It is dangerous when a NULL pointer is de-referenced, because on some computer it may return
0 and permitting execution to continue, or it may return the result stored in location zero, so it may
produce a serious error.

3. Pointer is dangerous when use of explicit type casts in converting between pointer types
Ex: pi = malloc (sizeof (int));
pf = (float*) pi;
4. In some system, pointers have the same size as type int, since int is the default type specifier,
some programmers omit the return type when defining a function. The return type defaults to int
which can later be interpreted as a pointer. This has proven to be a dangerous practice onsome
computer and the programmer is made to define explicit types for functions.

Pointers to Pointers
A variable which contains address of a pointer variable is called pointer-to-pointer.
DYNAMIC MEMORY ALLOCATION FUNCTIONS

1. malloc( ):
The function malloc allocates a user- specified amount of memory and a pointer to the start of
the allocated memory is returned.
If there is insufficient memory to make the allocation, the returned value is NULL.
Syntax:
data_type *x;
x= (data_type *) malloc(size);
Where,

x is a pointer variable of data_type

size is the number of bytes

Ex: int *ptr;

ptr = (int *) malloc(100*sizeof(int));

2. calloc( ):
The function calloc allocates a user- specified amount of memory and initializes the allocated
memory to 0 and a pointer to the start of the allocated memory is returned.
If there is insufficient memory to make the allocation, the returned value is NULL.

Syntax:
data_type *x;
x= (data_type *) calloc(n, size);
Where,
 x is a pointer variable of type int
n is the number of block to be allocated
size is the number of bytes in each block

Ex: int *x
x= calloc (10, sizeof(int));
The above example is used to define a one-dimensional array of integers. The capacity of this
array is n=10 and x [0: n-1] (x [0, 9]) are initially 0

Macro CALLOC
#define CALLOC (p, n, s)\
if ( ! ((p) = calloc (n, s)))\
{\
fprintf(stderr, “Insuffiient memory”);\
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);\
}\

3. realloc( ):
 Before using the realloc( ) function, the memory should have been allocated using malloc(
) or calloc( ) functions.
 The function relloc( ) resizes memory previously allocated by either mallor or calloc, which
means, the size of the memory changes by extending or deleting the allocated memory.
 If the existing allocated memory need to extend, the pointer value will not change.
 If the existing allocated memory cannot be extended, the function allocates a new block and
copies the contents of existing memory block into new memory block and then deletes the
old memory block.
 When realloc is able to do the resizing, it returns a pointer to the start of the new block and
when it is unable to do the resizing, the old block is unchanged and the function returns the
value NULL
Syntax:
data_type *x;
x= (data_type *) realloc(p, s );

The size of the memory block pointed at by p changes to S. When s > p the additional s-p
memory block have been extended and when s < p, then p-s bytes of the old block are freed.

Macro REALLOC
#define REALLOC(p,S)\
if (!((p) = realloc(p,s))) \
{\
fprintf(stderr, "Insufficient memory");\
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);\
 }\

4. free( )
Dynamically allocated memory with either malloc( ) or calloc ( ) does not return on its own.
The programmer must use free( ) explicitly to release space.

Syntax:
free(ptr);
This statement cause the space in memory pointer by ptr to be deallocated
REPRESENTATION OF LINEAR ARRAYS IN MEMORY

Linear Array
A linear array is a list of a finite number ‘n’ of homogeneous data element such that
a. The elements of the array are reference respectively by an index set consisting of n
consecutive numbers.
b. The element of the array are respectively in successive memory locations.

The number n of elements is called the length or size of the array. The length or the numbers
of elements of the array can be obtained from the index set by the formula
When LB = 0,
Length = UB – LB + 1
When LB = 1,
Length = UB
Where,

UB is the largest index called the Upper Bound

LB is the smallest index, called the Lower Bound

Representation of linear arrays in memory

Let LA be a linear array in the memory of the computer. The memory of the computer is
simply a sequence of address location as shown below,

1000
1001
1002
1003
1004

LOC (LA [K]) = address of the element LA [K] of the array LA

The elements of LA are stored in successive memory cells.

The computer does not keep track of the address of every element of LA, but needs to keep
track only the address of the first element of LA denoted by,
Base (LA)
and called the base address of LA.
Using the base address of LA, the computer calculates the address of any element of LA by
the formula

LOC (LA[K]) = Base(LA) + w(K – lower bound)

Where, w is the number of words per memory cell for the array LA.