C Programming language

A data structure is a way of storing and organizing data in computer so that it can used efficiently. In other words, we can say that the data structure is the representation of the logical relationship existing between the individual elements of data

Equivalently we can say that, data structure is a way of organizing all data items that considers not only the elements stored but also their relationship to each other.

Data structures mainly concerns with the following four things :

• Organization of data
• Accessing methods
• Degree of Associatively
• Processing alternatives for information

Data Structures are almost used in every software and every program. Some specific data structures are for used generating efficient algorithms, and maintaining huge amounts of data by providing the large databases and internet indexing services.

Having a sound knowledge of data structures plays a crucial role during the software design. Different kinds of data structures are used for different types of application depending upon their properties, say for e.g. binary-trees are mostly found useful in creating databases compiler uses hash tables for look up for the identifiers.

The main principle of the data structure is based on the ability of the computer to store and fetch the data at any place in its memory.

Now we know that the data structures are the building blocks of a program, and hence the selection of the particular data structure depends on the following factors :

• The data structure must be rich enough in its structure so that it may be able to fathom the relationship between the data.
• The data structure must be efficient and simple enough so that it may be processed conveniently as per requirement.