Book Image

C# Data Structures and Algorithms

By : Marcin Jamro
Book Image

C# Data Structures and Algorithms

By: Marcin Jamro

Overview of this book

Data structures allow organizing data efficiently. They are critical to various problems and their suitable implementation can provide a complete solution that acts like reusable code. In this book, you will learn how to use various data structures while developing in the C# language as well as how to implement some of the most common algorithms used with such data structures. At the beginning, you will get to know arrays, lists, dictionaries, and sets together with real-world examples of your application. Then, you will learn how to create and use stacks and queues. In the following part of the book, the more complex data structures will be introduced, namely trees and graphs, together with some algorithms for searching the shortest path in a graph. We will also discuss how to organize the code in a manageable, consistent, and extendable way. By the end of the book,you will learn how to build components that are easy to understand, debug, and use in different applications.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)

Simple lists


Arrays are really useful data structures and they are applied in many algorithms. However, in some cases their application could be complicated due to their nature, which does not allow to increase or decrease the length of the already-created array. What should you do if you do not know the total number of elements to store in the collection? Do you need to create a very big array and just not use unnecessary elements? Such a solution does not sound good, does it? A much better approach is to use a data structure that makes it possible to dynamically increase the size of the collection if it is necessary.

Array list

The first data structure that meets this requirement is the array list, which is represented by the ArrayList class from the System.Collections namespace. You can use this class to store big collections of data, to which you can easily add new elements when necessary. Of course, you can also remove them, count items, and find an index of a particular value stored...