Data structure actually contains two words. The first one is data, which is the abstract representation of reality in the computer programs.
For the other word, structure, which means the way to organize one or more than more things. The main purpose to organize something is to make the access to them available and easier.
Hereafter, something are referred as a set of data. The set here is not the same concept of set in pure mathematics, nor the class set in java collection framework. Here element in the set can be duplicated or not, depends on the specific scenario.
Sometimes, the set of data are organized as an array because maybe random access and indexed access to the elements in the set are necessary and important. Sometimes, the set of data are organized as a linked list because maybe it’s very difficult to allocate a large space at the beginning (a necessity when using array ) or the above features are not important.
Generally, array and linked list are two main low-level data structures that widely used in the compute program. Know how to manipulate elements and design algorithms on these two structures are very important to programmers.
High level data structures like List, Map, Set , Tree, graph are all represented by the two elementary structures.
In order to master the manipulation of the two, some practices are necessary. Let’s take some examples of practices to learn arrays and linked lists in programs.