Data structures play a central role in modern computer science. You interact with data structures much more often than with algorithms. In addition, data structures are essential building blocks in obtaining efficient algorithms. This course will cover major results and current directions of research in data structures.
Different kinds of data structures are suited to different kinds of applications, and some are highly specialized to specific tasks. For example, B-trees are particularly well-suited for implementation of databases, while compiler implementations usually use hash tables to look up identifiers. Data structures provide a means to manage large amounts of data efficiently, such as large databases and internet indexing services. Usually, efficient data structures are a key to designing efficient algorithms. Some formal design methods and programming languages emphasize data structures, rather than algorithms, as the key organizing factor in software design. Storing and retrieving can be carried out on data stored in both main memory and in secondary memory.
The implementation of a data structure usually requires writing a set of procedures that create and manipulate instances of that structure. The efficiency of a data structure cannot be analyzed separately from those operations. This observation motivates the theoretical concept of an abstract data type, a data structure that is defined indirectly by the operations that may be performed on it, and the mathematical properties of those operations (including their space and time cost).
C# is an evolution of the C and C++ family of languages. However, it borrows features from other programming languages, such as Delphi and Java. If you look at the most basic syntax of both C# and Java, the code looks very similar, but then again, the code looks a lot like C++ too, which is intentional. Developers often ask questions about why C# supports certain features or works in a certain way. The answer is often rooted in it's C++ heritage.
Most assembly languages and some low-level languages, such as BCPL (Basic Combined Programming Language), lack support for data structures. Many high-level programming languages and some higher-level assembly languages, such as MASM, on the other hand, have special syntax or other built-in support for certain data structures, such as vectors (one-dimensional arrays) in the C language or multi-dimensional arrays in Pascal.
Modern languages usually come with standard libraries that implement the most common data structures. Examples are the C++ Standard Template Library, the Java Collections Framework, and Microsoft's .NET Framework. Object-oriented programming languages, such as C++, Java and Smalltalk may use classes for this purpose.