What Are Linear Data Structures? Dzone Big Data

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What Are Linear Data
Structures?
 by Dave Saunders 
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CORE · Mar. 20, 22 · Big Data
Zone · Tutorial
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Why should I care?
We use these data structures every day in programming.
Even if you're already familiar with them, it's helpful to recap them
occasionally.
In 5 Minutes or Less:
As we said in the introduction, a data structure is 'linear' if the
elements form a sequence.
That means that the data structure has a first and last element, and
each element is connected to its previous and next element.
An 'array' is a linear data structure; the items are stores
sequentially.
A 'graph' is not a linear data structure; any node can be
linked to any other node in the graph - there is no fixed
'sequence'.
(if you're not familiar with graphs, don't worry - there's a newsletter
coming up that explores them in detail).
Let's take a look at some common linear data structures...
Arrays
If you've done any programming, you're almost certainly familiar
with the concept of arrays.
An array is like a bookcase; the items are stored next to each other,
but we can jump to any item we like to read it.
The items in the array have an 'index' that allows us to reference
them directly.
image on an array with some elements in
The ability to jump to any item we like to read its value is called
'random access', and is a huge advantage of an array.
We take this for granted, but this is not a property that many other
'linear data structures' have, as you'll see below.
When we allocate an array, we have to determine up-front how
much space we need.
If we fill our array, we have to stop and allocate some more space.
That means that while normal inserts into the array are very fast,
occasionally we have to pause for a short time to make the array
bigger - which takes some time.