Introduction to Custom Data Structures
Explore how to create and use custom data structures by modifying or combining basic ones like stacks, queues, or hash tables. Understand when to design these structures to meet specific efficiency or functionality needs, illustrated with real-world examples such as a custom stack with getMin and specialized caches. This lesson helps you recognize and implement custom data structures to tackle complex interview questions effectively.
We'll cover the following...
About the pattern
Although many coding problems can be solved using existing data structures like arrays, linked lists, stacks, queues, trees, and hash tables, sometimes these structures may not perfectly fit the requirements of a given problem or may not provide the desired efficiency. This is where we need custom data structures. These structures can be implemented using basic data structures as building blocks and incorporate unique features or behaviors specific to the problem domain. In easier words, a custom data structure is the modified version of an existing data structure.
For example, we have to build a web crawler. It starts with a set of seed URLs, visits each page, finds ...