ABSTRACT

A data structure is a way of organizing data that considers both the data items and their relationships to each other. Selecting the right data structure can improve memory utilization, improve processing efficiency, and reduce development costs. This chapter introduces several basic principles of data structures. The strengths and weaknesses of individual data structures will be discussed in context. The study of data structures is an essential component of most computer science curricula. The study of data structures is tightly linked to algorithms for efficiently creating a structure, inserting data into or deleting data from the structure, finding a specific data item, and traversing the structure. The simplest type of list is a set of data items stored in consecutive memory locations. In many operating systems, the set of control blocks that hold the data necessary for dispatching and memory allocation is implemented as a linked list.