On Data Structures

So far, we have learned about the basic data types of C, integers, floating-points and characters and used some of the specific data types of each kind, such as int, float, double, and char.

Now we will add a complex data type whose elements can be defined to be of an arbitrary type.

This is our first real example of what is generally called a data structure .

Niklaus Wirth, a famous Computer Scientist who invented the Pascal programming language, coined the slogan:

Algorithms + Data structures = Programs To reflect the fact that the two most important aspects of programming are designing algorithms and selecting and/or designing the data structures on which they operate.

Friday, 23-Aug-2002 11:04:58 EDT