Russell,
I like exploring and building various data structures as well; sometimes just
for the fun of it. :) It's really satisfying to find the most efficient
structure for your data. "Data structure" is a generic term. And can be
elaborated in many aspects. most prominent languages allow for generic
structuring. to your direct question: -a stack would come in handy for items
which need to be queued. A linked-list would be useful when storing a data
list of an unknown length.
I know that was a simplistic explanation, but I hope it helps.
Here's a few links on the subject:
http://www.nist.gov/dads/
http://cslibrary.stanford.edu/103/
http://www.inversereality.org/tutorials/c++/linkedlists.html
http://ciips.ee.uwa.edu.au/~morris/Year2/PLDS210/ds_ToC.html
-Eric
On Monday 11 November 2002 9:29 pm, you wrote:
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> Hey Everyone,
>
> I've been doing some exploring on the net about data structures. EVERY
> tutorial/explanation/what-have-you tells you what they are, how they work,
> etc., but they do not under any circumstances tell you what you would use
> them for...why would I use a stack, or a linked list, or whatever? They
> also don't say how to use them in {programming language}. This has been
> quite frustrating. Can anyone give me a hint, or point me to some
> documentation that talks about why you'd want to use a given data
> structure?
>
> Russell
> - --
> Linux -- the OS for the Renaissance Man
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--Eric Herrera, <me at ericherrera dot com>
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