Book Image

Python Data Structures and Algorithms

By : Benjamin Baka
Book Image

Python Data Structures and Algorithms

By: Benjamin Baka

Overview of this book

Data structures allow you to organize data in a particular way efficiently. They are critical to any problem, provide a complete solution, and act like reusable code. In this book, you will learn the essential Python data structures and the most common algorithms. With this easy-to-read book, you will be able to understand the power of linked lists, double linked lists, and circular linked lists. You will be able to create complex data structures such as graphs, stacks and queues. We will explore the application of binary searches and binary search trees. You will learn the common techniques and structures used in tasks such as preprocessing, modeling, and transforming data. We will also discuss how to organize your code in a manageable, consistent, and extendable way. The book will explore in detail sorting algorithms such as bubble sort, selection sort, insertion sort, and merge sort. 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 (20 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface
5
Stacks and Queues
7
Hashing and Symbol Tables

Built-in data types


Python data types can be divided into three categories: numeric, sequence, and mapping. There is also the None object that represents a Null, or absence of a value. It should not be forgotten either that other objects such as classes, files, and exceptions can also properly be considered types; however, they will not be considered here.

Every value in Python has a data type. Unlike many programming languages, in Python you do not need to explicitly declare the type of a variable. Python keeps track of object types internally.

Python built-in data types are outlined in the following table:

Category

Name

Description

None

None

The null object.

Numeric

int

Integer.

float

Floating point number.

complex

Complex number.

bool

Boolean (True, False).

Sequences

str

String of characters.

list

List of arbitrary objects.

Tuple

Group of arbitrary items.

range

Creates a range of integers.

Mapping

dict

Dictionary of key-value pairs.

set

Mutable, unordered collection of unique items.

frozenset

Immutable set.

None type

The...