Abstract Data Types (Adts)

Now we are very well aware of concept data structure, what it is used for, and how it is going to help us. So we should learn more in order to implement it according to the rules in an organized way.

What is abstract data type?

To simplify the process of solving problems, we combine the data structures with their operations and we call this Abstract Data Types (ADTs). An ADT consists of two parts:

• Declaration of Data
• Declaration of Operations.

Commonly used ADTs include Linked Lists, Stacks, Queues, Priority Queues, Binary Trees, Dictionaries, Disjoint Sets (Union and Find), Hash Tables, Graphs, and many others. For example, stack uses LIFO (Last-In-First-Out) mechanism while storing the data in data structures. The last element inserted into the stack is the first element that gets deleted. Common operations of it are: creating the stack, pushing an element onto the stack, popping an element from the stack, finding the current top of the stack, finding the number of elements in the stack, etc

While defining the ADTs do not worry about the implementation details. They come into the picture only when we want to use them. Different kinds of ADTs are suited to different kinds of applications, and some are highly specialized to specific tasks. By the end of this book, we will go through many of them and you will be in a position to relate the data structures to the kind of problems they solve.