Best Data Structures Questions and Answers for Written Test

A data structure is a way of organizing data that considers not only the items
stored, but also their relationship to each other. Advance knowledge about the
relationship between data items allows designing of efficient algorithms for the
manipulation of data

Compiler Design,
Operating System,
Database Management System,
Statistical analysis package,
Numerical Analysis,
Graphics,
Artificial Intelligence,
Simulation

Stack. Because of its LIFO (Last In First Out) property it remembers its ‘caller’ so
knows whom to return when the function has to return. Recursion makes use of system
stack for storing the return addresses of the function calls. Every recursive function has its equivalent iterative (non-recursive) function. Even when such equivalent iterative procedures are written, explicit stack is to be used.

Straight merging,
Natural merging,
Polyphase sort,
Distribution of Initial runs

The manipulation of Arithmetic expression,
Symbol Table construction,
Syntax analysis

Sparse matrix,
Index generation

Backtracking

One. If there is only one entry possible in the bucket, when the collision occurs,
there is no way to accommodate the colliding value. This results in the overlapping of
values.

Direct method,
Subtraction method,
Modulo-Division method,
Digit-Extraction method,
Mid-Square method,
Folding method,
Pseudo-random method.

A spanning tree is a tree associated with a network. All the nodes of the graph
appear on the tree once. A minimum spanning tree is a spanning tree organized so that
the total edge weight between nodes is minimized.

No.
Minimal spanning tree assures that the total weight of the tree is kept at its
minimum. But it doesn’t mean that the distance between any two nodes involved in the
minimum-spanning tree is minimum.

According to Access strategies Linked list is a linear one.
According to Storage Linked List is a Non-linear one

We call an algorithm randomized if its behavior is determined not only by its input but also by values produced by a random-number generator.

The (binary) heap data structure is an array object that can be viewed as a nearly complete binary tree. Each node of the tree corresponds to an element of the array that stores the value in the node.

A hash table is an effective data structure for implementing dictionaries. The expected time to search for an element in a hash table is O(1). A hash table is a generalization of the simple notion of an ordinary array.