Lecture 17: Applications of array data structures
Textbook chapters
3.1
What is a data structure?
- A way to store information that’s a higher level of abstraction than 1s and 0s
- Has defined ways that we interact with it (this is more like an ADT, abstract data type)
- Has an impelementation of those ways of interacting (this is a more precise definition: an implementation of an ADT)
What benefits do arrays have as data structures? Drawbacks?
- hold multiple pieces of information
- because of the above, we can have algorithms that deal with multiple pieces of information instead of just one
- in java, we already have array objects with predefined methods
- the information is ordered
- we can change what is stored in each slot
- can store duplicates
- (drawback) can’t change the length
- (drawback) we can only store one data type
Scoreboard
Suppose I want to be able to hold n high scores, ranked, in an array.
I want to be able to call add() and pass in a new entry, and after the entry is added, the scoreboard should still be correct.