Book Image

Learning JavaScript Data Structures and Algorithms - Third Edition

Book Image

Learning JavaScript Data Structures and Algorithms - Third Edition

Overview of this book

A data structure is a particular way of organizing data in a computer to utilize resources efficiently. Data structures and algorithms are the base of every solution to any programming problem. With this book, you will learn to write complex and powerful code using the latest ES 2017 features. Learning JavaScript Data Structures and Algorithms begins by covering the basics of JavaScript and introduces you to ECMAScript 2017, before gradually moving on to the most important data structures such as arrays, queues, stacks, and linked lists. You will gain in-depth knowledge of how hash tables and set data structures function as well as how trees and hash maps can be used to search files in an HD or represent a database. This book serves as a route to take you deeper into JavaScript. You’ll also get a greater understanding of why and how graphs, one of the most complex data structures, are largely used in GPS navigation systems in social networks. Toward the end of the book, you’ll discover how all the theories presented in this book can be applied to solve real-world problems while working on your own computer networks and Facebook searches.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Title Page
Dedication
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Chapter 8. Dictionaries and Hashes

In the previous chapter, we learned about sets. In this chapter, we will continue our discussion about data structures that store unique values (non-repeated values) using dictionaries and hashes.

In a set, we are interested in the value itself as the primary element. In a dictionary (or map), we store values in pairs as [key, value]. The same goes for hashes (they store values in pairs, such as [key, value]); however, the way that we implement these data structures is a little bit different as dictionaries can only store a single value per key, as we will learn in this chapter.

In this chapter, we will cover:

  • The dictionary data structure
  • The hash table data structure
  • Handling collisions in hash tables
  • The ECMAScript 2015Map, WeakMap, and WeakSet classes