What is Data Structure

CHAPTER-01

What is Data Structure 

  

•    The logical or mathematical model used to organize the data in

main memory is called a data structure .

•    Various types of data structures are available each with its special features.

•    The data structures are divided in two categories linear-data structures, non-linear data structures.

 

Primitive & non-Primitive DS

•    Each programming language provides various data types and each data type is represented differently within the computer’s memory. The memory requirement of a data type determines the permissible range of values for that data type. The data types can be classified in several categories, including primitive data types and non primitive data types.

•    The data types provided by a programming language are known as primitive data types or in-built data types.

•    Different programming languages provide different set of primitive data types.

•    For Example, the primitive data types in the c languages are int,char,float,long etc.

•    The data types that are derived from primitive data types of the programming language are known as non-primitive data types of the programming language are known as non-primitive data types or derived data types.

•    Various data types in the C language include arrays,functions and pointers.

•          In addition to primitive and non-primitive data types, programming languages allows to define new data types or user-defined data types as per the user’s requirements. For example, the various user-defined data types provided by C are structures, unions and enumerations.

Linear & Non Linear DS

•          Linear Data Structure is one in which its elements form a sequence. It means each element in the structure has a unique predecessor(past) and a unique successor(future) and array is the simplest linear structure.

•     Linear data structure is one in which its elements form a sequence. It means each element in the structure has a unique predecessor and a unique successor. An array is the simplest linear data structure. Various other linear data structures are linked lists, stacks and queues.

•     A non-linear data structure is one in which its elements do not form a sequence. It means, unlike linear data structure, each element is not constrained to have a unique predecessor and a unique successor. Trees and Graphs are the two data structures which come under this category.

Posted in: Data Structures (DS)