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 Stack of Books

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 What is a Stack?
› A stack is a linear data structure of ordered items such
that items can be inserted and removed only at one
end.

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 What can we do with a stack?
› push - place an item on the stack
› peek - Look at the item on top of the stack, but
do not remove it
› pop - Look at the item on top of the stack and
remove it

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 A stack is a LIFO (Last-In/First-Out) data
structure
 A stack is sometimes also called a pushdown
store.
 What are some applications of stacks?
› Program execution
› Parsing
› Evaluating postfix expressions

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 2
top
8
top 8
1 1 1
top Push(8)
7 7 Push(2) 7
2 2 2

pop(
)
8
1
top
top 1
top 7 7 pop()
2 pop() 2
7
2

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 Problem:
› What happens if we try to pop an item off the stack
when the stack is empty?
 This is called a stack underflow. The pop method needs
some way of telling us that this has happened. In java
we use the java.util.EmptyStackException

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 There are two ways we can implement a stack:
› Using an array
› Using a linked list

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 Implementing a stack using an array is fairly
easy.
› The bottom of the stack is at data[0]
› The top of the stack is at data[numItems-1]
› push onto the stack at data[numItems]
› pop off of the stack at data[numItems-1]

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 Implementing a stack using a linked list isn’t that
bad either…
› Store the items in the stack in a linked list
› The top of the stack is the head node, the bottom of
the stack is the end of the list
› push by adding to the front of the list
› pop by removing from the front of the list

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 We can use a stack to reverse the letters in a
word.
 How?

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 Read each letter in the word and push it onto the
stack
 When you reach the end of the word, pop the
letters off the stack and print them out.

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 Some direct applications:
› Page-visited history in a Web browser
› Undo sequence in a text editor
› Chain of method calls in the Java Virtual Machine
› Evaluating postfix expressions

 Some indirect applications

› Auxiliary data structure for some algorithms
› Component of other data structures

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 (5+9)*2+6*5
 An ordinary arithmetical expression like the above is called
infix-expression (i.e. binary operators appear between their
operands)

 The order of operations evaluation is determined by the

precedence rules.

 When an evaluation order is desired that is different from that

provided by the precedence, parentheses are used to override
precedence rules.

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 Expressions can also be represented using postfix notation (i.e. each
operator comes after its two operands).

 The advantage of postfix notation is that the order of operation

evaluation is unique without the need for precedence rules or
parenthesis.

Infix Postfix
16 / 2 16 2 /
(2 + 14)* 5 2 14 + 5 *
2 + 14 * 5 2 14 5 * +
(6 – 2) * (5 + 4) 6 2 - 5 4 +*
 The following algorithm uses a stack to evaluate a
postfix expression.
Start with an empty stack
for (each item in the expression) {
if (the item is a number)
Push the number onto the stack
else if (the item is an operator){
Pop two operands from the stack
Apply the operator to the operands
Push the result onto the stack
}
}
Pop the only one number from the stack – that’s the result of the evaluation
 Example: Consider the postfix expression, 2 10 + 9 6 - /, which is (2
+ 10) / (9 - 6) in infix, the result of which is 12 / 3 = 4.
 The following is a trace of the postfix evaluation algorithm for the above.
 Java Libraries:
› Use the Java Collections Framework:
java.util.Stack (legacy)

 To create a new stack, you can instantiate the

stack implementation
Stack<String> stack = new Stack<>();
 Push Operation:
› Syntax: push(element)
› Adds an element to the top of the stack.
 Pop Operation:
› Syntax: pop()
› Removes and returns the top element.
 Peek Operation:
› Syntax: peek()
› Returns the top element without removing it.
 Empty Check:
› Syntax: isEmpty()
› Checks if the stack is empty.
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 Create a Java program that defines a class for a stack data structure. In
your main method, perform the following operations:
› Push the following elements onto the stack in the given order:
 "Mustapha"
 "Alamin"
 "Arfat"
› Print the size of the stack.
› Pop and print the elements one by one until the stack is empty.
› Check if the stack is empty and print the result.

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