Posted by Abhishek on December 10, 2019
Data Structure is a way of organizing data so that it can be used effectively.
Before we understand the Data Structures, it is important to understand what an “Abstract Data Type” is. An Abstract Data Type (ADT) is an abstraction of a data structure which provides only the interface to which a data structure must adhere to. The interface does not give any specific details about how something should be implemented or in what programming language.
For example, an array (which is an ADT) should have facilities to insert an element, update an element, calculate the size of an array, get the index of an element, etc. Here, the ADT says these methods/functionalities should be available. It doesn’t say anything about how to implement and what programming language to use.
When an ADT is implemented, we call it a Data Structure.
Examples
| Abstract Data Type [Abstraction] | Data Structure [Implementation] |
| List | Dynamic Array Linked List |
| Queue | Linked List Based Queue Array Based Queue Stack Based Queue |
| Map | Tree Map Hash Map |