Book Image

PHP 7 Data Structures and Algorithms

By : Mizanur Rahman
5 (1)
Book Image

PHP 7 Data Structures and Algorithms

5 (1)
By: Mizanur Rahman

Overview of this book

PHP has always been the the go-to language for web based application development, but there are materials and resources you can refer to to see how it works. Data structures and algorithms help you to code and execute them effectively, cutting down on processing time significantly. If you want to explore data structures and algorithms in a practical way with real-life projects, then this book is for you. The book begins by introducing you to data structures and algorithms and how to solve a problem from beginning to end using them. Once you are well aware of the basics, it covers the core aspects like arrays, listed lists, stacks and queues. It will take you through several methods of finding efficient algorithms and show you which ones you should implement in each scenario. In addition to this, you will explore the possibilities of functional data structures using PHP and go through advanced algorithms and graphs as well as dynamic programming. By the end, you will be confident enough to tackle both basic and advanced data structures, understand how they work, and know when to use them in your day-to-day work
Table of Contents (14 chapters)

Understanding hash tables

In programming language, a hash table is a data structure which is used to make an array associative. It means we can use keys to map values instead of using an index. A hash table must use a hash function to compute an index into an array of buckets or slots, from which the desired value can be found:

As we have mentioned several times, a PHP array is actually a hash table and hence it supports associative arrays. We need to remember one thing: that we do not need to define a hash function for the associative array implementation. PHP does it internally for us. As a result, when we create an associative array in PHP, we are actually creating a hash table. For example, the following code can be considered as the hash table:

$array = []; 
$array['Germany'] = "Position 1";
$array['Argentina'] = "Position 2";
$array...