Algorithms in Java, Third Edition, Parts 1-4: Fundamentals, Data Structures, Sorting, Searching

Chapter Four. Abstract Data Types

Developing abstract models for our data and for the ways in which our programs process those data is an essential ingredient in the process of solving problems with a computer. We see examples of this principle at a low level in everyday programming (for example, when we use arrays and linked lists, as discussed in Chapter 3) and at a high level in problem-solving (as we saw in Chapter 1, when we used union–find forests to solve the connectivity problem). In this chapter, we consider abstract data types (ADTs), which allow us to build programs that use high-level abstractions. With abstract data types, we can separate the conceptual transformations that our programs perform on our data from any particular data-structure ...