Computer Science: Structures: GCSE

Data Structures

Computer Programming is all about creating a set of instructions to complete a specific task.The study of Data Structures is about organising data so that it is suitable for computer processing.Most data structures can be views as simple containers that can be used to store a collection of objects of a given type The container could be a sentence the objects (actions within the sentence) are called the elements of the container

In Programming, one of the most important design decisions involves working out which data structure to use. Arrays and Linked Lists are among the most common data structures, and is applicable in different situations. Arrays and Linked Lists are both designed to store multiple elements, most often of the same type. An Array is an ordered arrangement of data elements that are accessed by their referencing their location within the array. A Linked List is a group of elements, each of which contains a pointer that points to the following element in the list. The list has to maintain the pointers when the data changes

One-Dimensional Arrays

A One-Dimensional Array is a structured collection of components (often called array elements) that can be accessed individually by specifying the position of a component with a single index value.One-Dimensional Arrays in Python and PHP allow a list of items to be stored with the capability of accessing each item by pointing to its location within the array.

Table Array

In a Table Array, each of the array elements is identified or accessed by an index.An array with 10 elements will have indices from 0 to 9. That means that TABLEDATA[0] returns the first element  of the TABLEDATA array.The correct name for identifying an element is 'using a pointer': the code points to the element

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Two-Dimensional Arrays

Two-Dimensional Arrays are a little more complex than One-Dimensional Arrays, but really they are nothing more than an array of arrays, in other words an array in one row and another in the next row.A two-dimensional array lends itself to a visual display in rows and columns. The first index represents a row and the second index represents a column.