Data Structures - Terms/Defs for Quiz 2

Data structure

(1) An organization of objects that allows certain operations to be performed efficiently; (2) the programming constructs used to implement a collection.

LIFO

(1) Last in, first out; (2) a description of a collection in which the last element added will be the first element removed.

Interface

(1) The manner in which one thing interacts with another; (2) a set of public methods that enables one object to interact with another

Node

A class that represents a single element in a linked structure

Linked structure

A data structure that uses object reference variables to create links between objects

Stack

A linear collection whose elements are added and removed from the same end in a LIFO manner

Doubly linked list

A linked list in which each node has references to both the next node and the previous node in the list

Linked list

A linked structure in which one object refers to the next, creating a linear ordering

Sentinel node

A node at the front or end of a linked list that serves as a marker and does not represent an element in the list.

Generic type

A placeholder for an object type that is not made concrete until the class that refers to it is instantiated

Program Stack

A stack of activation records used to keep track of method invocations during program executions.

Push

A stack operation in which an element is added to the top of the stack

Pop

A stack operation in which an element is removed from the top of the stack.

Exception

An object that defines an unusual or erroneous situation

Collection

An object that gathers and organizes other objects

Activation record

An object that represents a method invocation

Inheritance

The object-oriented principle of deriving one class from an existing class.

Polymorphism

The object-oriented principle that enables a reference variable to point to related but distinct types of objects over time, and in which method invocations are bound to code at run-time

Class hierarchy

The relationship among classes created by inheritance in which the child of one parent can itself be the parent of other classes

Java Collections API

The subset of the Java application programming interfaces (APIs) that represent or deal with collections

Abstract data type

a data type whose values and operations are not inherently defined within a programming language

Abstraction

a point of view that hides or ignores certain details, usually to make concepts easier to manage

Self referential object

when the instance of a class defines as instance data a reference to another object to another instance of the same class.