Data Structure
Introduction
Data Structure can be defined as the group of data elements
which provides an efficient way of storing and organising data in
the computer so that it can be used efficiently. Some examples of
Data Structures are arrays, Linked List, Stack, Queue, etc. Data
Structures are widely used in almost every aspect of Computer
Science i.e. Operating System, Compiler Design, Artifical
intelligence, Graphics and many more.
Data Structures are the main part of many computer science
algorithms as they enable the programmers to handle the data in
an efficient way.
Basic Terminology
Data structures are the building blocks of any program or the
software. Choosing the appropriate data structure for a program
is the most difficult task for a programmer. Following terminology
is used as far as data structures are concerned
Data: Data can be defined as an elementary value or the
collection of values, for example, student's name and its id are
the data about the student.
Group Items: Data items which have subordinate data items are
called Group item, for example, name of a student can have first
name and the last name.
Record: Record can be defined as the collection of various data
items, for example, if we talk about the student entity, then its
name, address, course and marks can be grouped together to
form the record for the student.
File: A File is a collection of various records of one type of entity,
for example, if there are 60 employees in the class, then there
will be 20 records in the related file where each record contains
the data about each employee.
Attribute and Entity: An entity represents the class of certain
objects. it contains various attributes. Each attribute represents
the particular property of that entity.
Field: Field is a single elementary unit of information
representing the attribute of an entity.
Data Structure Classi cation
Operations on data structure
1) Traversing: Every data structure contains the set of data
elements. Traversing the data structure means visiting each
element of the data structure in order to perform some specific
operation like searching or sorting.
2) Insertion: Insertion can be defined as the process of adding
the elements to the data structure at any location.
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If the size of data structure is n then we can only insert n-1 data
elements into it.
3) Deletion:The process of removing an element from the data
structure is called Deletion. We can delete an element from the
data structure at any random location.
4) Searching: The process of finding the location of an element
within the data structure is called Searching. There are two
algorithms to perform searching, Linear Search and Binary
Search.
5) Sorting: The process of arranging the data structure in a
specific order is known as Sorting. There are many algorithms
that can be used to perform sorting, for example, insertion sort,
selection sort, bubble sort, etc.
6) Merging: When two lists List A and List B of size M and N
respectively, of similar type of elements, clubbed or joined to
produce the third list, List C of size (M+N), then this process is
called merging
