16. What to Use and Why

In This Chapter

• Analyzing the Problem

• Foundational Data Structures

• Special-Ordering Data Structures

• Sorting

• Specialty Data Structures

• External Storage

• Onward

We briefly summarize what we’ve learned so far, with an eye toward deciding what data structure or algorithm to use in a particular situation.

This chapter comes with some caveats. Of necessity, it’s very general. Every real-world situation is unique, so what we say here may not be the right answer to your problem. You need to analyze the problem to determine its characteristics and see whether they match those of the data structure or algorithm.

This chapter is divided into these somewhat arbitrary sections:

• Analyzing the problem: Determine the characteristics ...

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