DS----Data Structure unit 2-1

Data Structure Abstract Data Type

An abstract data type (ADT) is a theoretical concept that defines a set of data values and the operations that can be performed on those values, without specifying how those operations are implemented. In other words, an ADT provides an abstract interface for working with data, but does not dictate the internal representation or implementation of that data.

An ADT is often used as a specification for a data structure, providing a clear definition of what the structure should do and how it should behave, without specifying how the data is actually stored or processed. This makes it easier to reason about the behavior of the data structure and to switch out different implementations without changing the code that uses the data structure.

Some common examples of ADTs include:

Stack: A collection of elements that supports two operations, push and pop, where push adds an element to the top of the stack and pop removes the top element from the stack.

Queue: A collection of elements that supports two operations, enqueue and dequeue, where enqueue adds an element to the back of the queue and dequeue removes the front element from the queue.

List: A collection of elements that can be dynamically resized and supports operations like adding or removing elements at the beginning or end of the list.

Map: A collection of key-value pairs that supports operations like adding, removing, and searching for elements based on their keys.

In C or other programming languages, ADTs are often implemented as data structures with associated functions that operate on those structures. For example, a stack might be implemented as a linked list or an array, and would have functions like push and pop that manipulate the underlying data in the appropriate way. However, the code that uses the stack does not need to know anything about the implementation details, only the interface provided by the ADT.