Data Structures, unit: Stacks and Queues. Core concepts, terminology, and worked-example cues a college student meets for this unit, building on prior units without repeating them. Front: a term, concept, or short problem cue. Back: the definition, explanation, or answer.
38 cards · basic cards · AI-written, checked twice. Edit anything.
- What is a stack?
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A linear data structure that follows Last-In-First-Out (LIFO) order- What operation adds an element to the top of a stack?
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Push- What operation removes and returns the top element of a stack?
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Pop- What operation returns the top element of a stack without removing it?
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Peek (or top)- What is the time complexity of push and pop operations on a stack?
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O(1)- What real-world scenario is commonly modeled by a stack?
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The undo feature in a text editor, or a browser's back button history- What is stack overflow, in the context of function calls?
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Running out of stack memory, often due to excessive or infinite recursion- What data structure is used behind the scenes to manage function calls in most programming languages?
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A call stack- What is a common use of a stack in checking balanced parentheses?
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Pushing opening brackets and popping/matching them against closing brackets- What is a queue?
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A linear data structure that follows First-In-First-Out (FIFO) order- What operation adds an element to the back of a queue?
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Enqueue- What operation removes and returns the element at the front of a queue?
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Dequeue- What is the time complexity of enqueue and dequeue operations on a well-implemented queue?
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O(1)- What real-world scenario is commonly modeled by a queue?
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People waiting in line, or tasks waiting to be processed in order- What is a circular queue?
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A queue implemented with a fixed-size array that wraps around to reuse freed space
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