Talk:List of data structures

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WHY BITMAP is considered as a data structure[edit]

  1. Bitmaps
   * Images
   * Heightfields

WHY? Shouldn't it be bit array??? Visame (talk) 16:47, 20 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]


I was wondering if this page could be extended to become a more comprehensive listing of data structures. The idea would be to create a standard format of the form

Name

Operations

Efficiency

lower bounds

refs

cross refs to other structures etc.


That may not be appropriate for the list page, but each page could have a table, like most language, country, and taxonomic classification pages have, that has a standard format with common information. --G Gordon Worley III 22:50, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

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An associative array is a Abstract Data Type, not a Data Structure. Should it be on here?

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Shouldn't BSP trees get their own link? It has it's own article already..

Organization[edit]

The way this page is currently layed out is inconsistent and rather confusing. Many of the data structures listed could fit easily in more than one place. For example, heaps are a type of priority queue, and binary search trees are a type of associative array. I suggest this page be reorganized so that the top-level heading are abstract data types and underneath are all of the concrete data structures that implement the abstract data type. A "Miscellaneous" top-level category would house any unique concrete data structures. Thoughts?

Does that mean that an entry may occur under more than one abstract data type? -Pgan002 (talk) 03:49, 4 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Columns with strong and weak points of each data structure[edit]

I would like to see in this page, data structures in a table with columns saying which advantages they have: For instance, some data structures are useful when data is sparse, while some other behave better when they are complete. Some of them behave very well on parallel environments while some others do better on single threaded. Some others provide very good space usage, while some others give a very good performance while not caring about the space too much. Some have very fast queries while slow updates.

That would make a page like a reference where to find which data structure is suitable for each problem depending on the properties we want.

Just some thoughts.

That would be great, plus time bounds on find, insert and delete operations on each structure. -Pgan002 (talk) 03:50, 4 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Good idea! But some families of data structures are functionally different, while others differ only in their performance characteristics. We might group them accordingly into tables. For example, all arrays and lists could go into a table with the following columns:
Time complexity of...
  • Random access
  • Sequential access
  • Random insertion
  • Sequential insertion
  • Random deletion
  • Sequential deletion

String a primitive?[edit]

Is string really a primitive type? it is composed of an array of another primitive thus falling into a different class? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.97.20.167 (talk) 17:48, 14 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I guess a lot changed since this question was asked - string is no longer listed as a primitive.
That is, however, wrong: in some languages, such as PHP and JS, a string is considered a primitive (both languages lack a primitive that represents a single character).
This logic can be considered in the same way that an int64/bigint is made up of 2x int32/int, each of which is made up of 2x int16/smallint, which in turn is made up of.....and finally, which is made up of one bit/bool.
That said, I believe that the problem with this article is that it assumes some types are universally (non-)primitive, when clearly that depends on the programming language. I would rather have a short section that explains the difference between primitive/non-primitive/composite (with some examples) and the a plain ol' list of all types. Uuf6429 (talk) 23:36, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Layout of the article[edit]

Are tables are really useful here? I think plain list with some more subsections would be better here. Andreas Kaufmann (talk) 08:15, 18 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Date not mentioned[edit]

Date, or DateTime, should be mentioned, perhaps in a new section that includes String, as perhaps a "possibly primitive (depending upon the programing language)" type.

However I know part of the reason why it is not yet included is that there doesn't seem to be an article for Date (datatype), DateTime (datatype) or similar. Mark Hurd (talk) 04:43, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In which languages is it a primitive type? I think normally it would be just a record/object, not a primitive type built into the language. -- X7q (talk) 06:38, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It is effectively (although not quite completely) a primitive of .NET Framework-based languages. And VB6 hid the fact that it was effectively a Double. Mark Hurd (talk) 13:50, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It is also a primitive type of any SQL dialect. Fabian Pijcke (talk) 05:48, 7 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Redirection[edit]

I suggest that "Data structures" redirect here and not to "Data structure" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.139.71.50 (talk) 06:50, 3 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Trees : In these data structures each tree node compares a bit slice of key values[edit]

Huh? How is trees a type of trees? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.183.23.147 (talk) 02:06, 17 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Why is the line even there?
A "node compares" to what? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.183.23.147 (talk) 01:59, 17 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
14.139.240.50 (talk) converted this from "Tries". I have reverted. Mark Hurd (talk) 07:19, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Are the primitive types data structures?[edit]

hello

I don't know why the data types, and the primitive data type are listed on a list that is called "list of data structures".

won't it be clear if there were and introduction explaining why they are included in this list?

I can't understand why "data types" and "primitive data types", that are not related to "data structures" in their definition, are listed as data structures.

see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_data_type https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_type

I can't give sugestions because I don't understand much of this. thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by Elcarlis54 (talkcontribs) 16:09, 3 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tables should be mentioned?[edit]

Records are discussed but I would have thought that tables warrant a mention too? A simple table implementation would be a list of (pointers to) records. Alternatively, if tables do not fall under the rubric of data structures, then this should be pointed out somewhere in the article with reasons. HTH. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 14:56, 23 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Why Trie is not under the Tree category?[edit]

Hello,

I am confused why "Trie" is not under the "Tree" category?

Because in the Trie it is said that:

In computer science, a trie, also called digital tree or prefix tree, is a type of search tree, a tree data structure used for locating specific keys from within a set.

Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nurgasemetey (talkcontribs) 20:40, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note to any other readers: it looks like this was (at some point) fixed. Caleb Stanford (talk) 17:00, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

python picture?[edit]

Why is the Python 3 standard type hierarchy depicted at the top of this page? The page has very little to do with Python's classification of data types. Caleb Stanford (talk) 16:58, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

removed per WP:BOLD, further discussion welcome! Caleb Stanford (talk) 16:59, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

List is ordered. why dubious?[edit]

The list is definitely ordered. why would this be dubious? Jasdasra (talk) 00:13, 9 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I came here looking for the answer to this question, as I'm fairly certain that this is NOT dubious. 2001:67C:10EC:574F:8000:0:0:36 (talk) 16:26, 13 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Title change, list of data structures and types[edit]

Due to the ambiguity between informal and formal definitions, having an inclusive list of structures and types would make more sense. Jasdasra (talk) 00:43, 9 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Associative array order[edit]

Quoting the article:

> This order is usually determined by the order in which the elements are added to the structure

In PHP, that applies to associative arrays as well. In fact, in PHP, lists are plain associative arrays with an unmanaged/auto-incrementing index. Uuf6429 (talk) 23:49, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]