Hello everyone, hope y'all doing well and having a great day. Today, I will be writing on the fundamentals of data structure.

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WHAT IS A DATA STRUCTURE

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A data structure is a way of organising data that consists not only the items stored, but also their relationship with each other.

Note: The way or ease at which you store data can tell the way or ease at which you can retrieve that same data.

Advanced knowledge about relationships between data items allows designing of efficient algorithms for the manipulation of data.

Data structure allows us to archive an important goal, component reuse. When a particular component structure is archived, it can be easily reused as many times as possible. Examples of data structure include;

• Trees
• Queues
• List
• Dequeues, etc

Once each data structure has been implemented, it can used over and over again in various applications.

Many algorithms require that we use a proper representation of data to archive efficiently (depending on the way data items are being stored)

Each data structure allows insertion, access, and deletions. The representation of data and operations that are allowed for it are called Data Structures or Permissible Operations.

CLASSIFICATION OF DATA STRUCTURES

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PREMITIVE DATA STRUCTURES:

This is a type of data structure in which data items are operated closest to the machine level instruction. Example, int, char and double.

NON-PREMITIVE DATA STRUCTURES:

In this type of data structure, data items are not operated closest to the machine level instruction.

LINEAR DATA STRUCTURES:

In this type of data structure, data items are stored in a sequential order. Example, Arrays, Lists, Stacks, and Queues. Operations performed on linear data structure include,

• Traveersl: It is the processing or going through of every element in the list.

• Search: It is the finding of the location of the element with a given value.

• Insertion: It is the adding if a new value to the list.

• Deletion: It is the removing if an element from the list.

• Sorting: It is the arrangement of element in a particular order such as alphabetically, or alphanumerically.

• Merging: It is the combining of two or more lists into a single list.

NON-LINEAR DATA STRUCTURES:

In non-linear data structure, the order if the data structure is not present. Examples include trees, graphs, heaps, binary trees. In order for a data to be accessed, it has to be structured.

ABSTRACT DATA TYPE:

Abstract data structure also know as ADT is a specification of a set of data and the set of operations on the data.

USES OF ABSTRACT DATA TYPE (ADT)

• It helps to efficiently develop well designed programs.
• It facilitates the decomposition of the complex task of developing a software system into a number of simpler subtasks.
• It helps to rebuild the number of things the programmer has to keep in mind at anytime.
• Breaking down of complex tasks into simple subtasks also simplifies testing and debugging.

CONCLUSION

The way data items are organised and the relationships between them is important as a programmer. It is essential that these are kept in mind while developing good and quality softwares as they make programming less complex and easier to understand when reuse is needed.

Thank you for taking the time to read my content. I hope you like it. Thanks for your continuous support.

Cc
@zero-to-infinity