14.Arrays vs lists, binary search - Part A
This chapter covers the differences between arrays and lists in programming, focusing on their storage mechanisms, access times, and typical operations. Arrays allow constant time access to elements but are inefficient for insertion and deletion, while lists offer more flexibility for dynamic operations at the cost of linear access times. The chapter also introduces binary search as a method for finding values within sequences, emphasizing the importance of array or list representations and the need for sorted sequences in binary search algorithms.
Sections
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What we have learnt
- Arrays store elements in a contiguous block of memory, allowing constant time access.
- Lists allow for dynamic storage of elements with flexible sizes but require linear time to access elements.
- Insertion and deletion in lists is efficient compared to arrays due to their linked structure.
Key Concepts
- -- Array
- A data structure that stores a fixed-size sequence of elements of the same type, allowing for constant time access.
- -- List
- A data structure that stores a sequence of elements with links between them, allowing for flexible sizes and efficient insertion and deletion.
- -- Binary Search
- An efficient algorithm for finding a value in a sorted sequence by repeatedly dividing the search interval in half.
Additional Learning Materials
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