DSA

 

Data Structure is a way of collecting and organizing data in such a way that we can perform operations on these data in an effective way. Data Structures is about rendering data elements in terms of some relationship, for better organization and storage.

Types of Data Structures

There are two types of data structures:

• Primitive data structure
• Non-primitive data structure

Primitive Data structure

The primitive data structures are primitive data types. The int, char, float, double, and pointer are the primitive data structures that can hold a single value.

Non-Primitive Data structure

The non-primitive data structure is divided into two types:

• Linear data structure
• Non-linear data structure

Linear Data Structure

The arrangement of data in a sequential manner is known as a linear data structure. The data structures used for this purpose are Arrays, Linked list, Stacks, and Queues. In these data structures, one element is connected to only one another element in a linear form.  

 

Need of Data Structure – 

As applications are becoming more complex and the amount of data is increasing day by day, which may cause problems with processing speed, searching data, handling multiple requests etc. Data structure provides a way of organizing, managing, and storing data efficiently. With the help of data structure, the data items can be traversed easily. Data structure provides efficiency, re usability and abstraction. It plays an important role in enhancing the performance of a program because the main function of the program is to store and retrieve the user’s data as fast as possible.

Advantages of Data Structures

Efficiency: Efficiency of a program depends upon the choice of data structures. For example: suppose, we have some data and we need to perform the search for a perticular record. In that case, if we organize our data in an array, we will have to search sequentially element by element. hence, using array may not be very efficient here. There are better data structures which can make the search process efficient like ordered array, binary search tree or hash tables.

Reusability: Data structures are reusable, i.e. once we have implemented a particular data structure, we can use it at any other place. Implementation of data structures can be compiled into libraries which can be used by different clients.

Abstraction: Data structure is specified by the ADT which provides a level of abstraction. The client program uses the data structure through interface only, without getting into the implementation details.