Dynamic Containers
A container is a data structure consisting of multiple instances of the same data type. For instance, a C++ array is a simple kind of container. The type of array says what kind of data it contains. An array has a fixed size specified at compile time. A dynamic array is a container that has a fixed type and an arbitrary size, but the size is fixed when the container is created.
Linked Lists
Using dynamic class instances, each containing a single pointer, a program can create a container that can grow to a size that is not predetermined. Each entry in a container is a class (or struct) instance. The class has a payload (a member called value_
, an int
in the following example) and a pointer member (called next_
in the following example), which refers to the next instance in the container. The class definition looks like this:
struct numeric_item { int value_; numeric_item* next_; };
Dynamically created instances...