Introduction to Custom Data Structures
Explore the concept of custom data structures and how modifying or combining standard data structures can optimize solutions for complex problems. This lesson helps you understand when and why to create custom structures, illustrated through practical examples like a custom stack with constant-time minimum retrieval and data structures for problem-specific implementations.
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 links on each page, and then follows those links to find more pages. Crawling the web means dealing with lots of pages and handling many URLs. Additionally, storing and managing these URLs efficiently while ensuring uniqueness and prioritizing certain pages (e.g., based on relevance or ...