Book Image

PHP 7 Data Structures and Algorithms

By : Rahman
5 (1)
Book Image

PHP 7 Data Structures and Algorithms

5 (1)
By: 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)

Linear searching

One of the most common ways of performing a search is to compare each item with the one we are looking for. This is known as linear search or sequential search. It is the most basic way of performing a search. If we consider that we have n items in a list, in the worst case, we have to search n items to find a particular item. We can iterate through a list or array to find an item. Let's consider the following example:

function search(array $numbers, int $needle): bool {
$totalItems = count($numbers);

for ($i = 0; $i < $totalItems; $i++) {
if($numbers[$i] === $needle){
return TRUE;
}
}
return FALSE;
}

We have a function named search, which takes two arguments. One is the list of numbers, and the other is the number we are looking for in the list. We are running a for loop to iterate through each item in the list and compare...