Introduction to Data Structures and Algorithms

 Introduction to Data Structures and Algorithms


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. 

For example, we have some data which has, player's name "Rohit" and age 21. Here "Rohit" is of String data type and 21 is of integer data type.

We can organize this data as a record like Player record, which will have both player's name and age in it. Now we can collect and store player's records in a file or database as a data structure. 

For example: "Rahul" 23, "Pant" 24, "Dhawan" 29

If you are aware of Object Oriented programming concepts, then a class also does the same thing, it collects different type of data under one single entity. The only difference being, data structures provides for techniques to access and manipulate data efficiently.

In simple language, "Data Structures are structures programmed to store ordered data, so that various operations can be performed on it easily. It represents the knowledge of data to be organized in memory. It should be designed and implemented in such a way that it reduces the complexity and increases the efficiency".

A data structure is a specialized format for organizing, processing, retrieving and storing data. There are several basic and advanced types of data structures, all designed to arrange data to suit a specific purpose. Data structures make it easy for users to access and work with the data they need in appropriate ways. Most importantly, data structures frame the organization of information so that machines and humans can better understand it.

In computer science and computer programming, a data structure may be selected or designed to store data for the purpose of using it with various algorithms. In some cases, the algorithm's basic operations are tightly coupled to the data structure's design. Each data structure contains information about the data values, relationships between the data and -- in some cases -- functions that can be applied to the data.

For instance, in an object-oriented programming language, the data structure and its associated methods are bound together as part of a class definition. In non-object-oriented languages, there may be functions defined to work with the data structure, but they are not technically part of the data structure.

VARIOUS DEFINATIONS OF DATA STRUCTURES :

  • "Data structures are a specific way of organizing data in a specialized format on a computer so that the information can be organized, processed, stored, and retrieved quickly and effectively. They are a means of handling information, rendering the data for easy use."

  • "Structural representation of data items in primary memory to do storage & retrieval operations efficiently."

  • "Data may be organized in many different ways logical or mathematical model of a program particularly organization of data. This organized data is called “Data Structure”. 

  • "The organized collection of data is called a ‘Data Structure".

 Data Structure = Organized data + Allowed operations 

ADVANTAGES OF DATA STRUCTURES:

  1. 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 particular 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.

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