Overview

This book provides a broad coverage of fundamental and advanced con- cepts of data structures and algorithms. The material presented includes a treatment of elementary data structures such as arrays, lists, stacks, and trees, as well as newer structures that have emerged to support the process- ing of multidimensional or spatial data files. These newer structures and algorithms have received increasing attention in recent years in conjunc- tion with the rapid growth in computer-aided design, computer graphics, and related fields in which multidimensional data structures are of great interest. Our main objective is to mesh the underlying concepts with application examples that are of practical use and are timely in their implementations. To this end, we have used mainly the Abstract Data Structure (or Abstract Data Type (ADT)) approach to define structures for data and operations. Object-oriented programming (OOP) methodologies are employed to im- plement these ADT concepts. In OOP, data and operations for an ADT are combined into a single entity (object). ADTs are used to specifiy the objects-arrays, stacks, queues, trees, and graphs. OOP allows the pro- grammer to more closely mimic the real-world applications. This OOP is more structured and modular than previous attempts. OOP has become de facto state-of-the-art in the 1990s.