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.