Types of Data Structures in Simple Words

Prasanna Brabourame
3 min readAug 18, 2022
  1. Array
  2. Linked List
  3. Queues
  4. Stack
  5. Trees
  6. Hash
  7. Trie
  8. Graph

Array

An Array is a data structure that contains a group of elements. Typically these elements are all of the same data type, such as an integer or string.

Let’s suppose a class consists of ten students, and the class has to publish their results. If you had declared all ten variables individually, it would be challenging to manipulate and maintain the data.

If more students were to join, it would become more difficult to declare all the variables and keep track of it. To overcome this problem, arrays came into the picture.

Linked List

A linked list is like a chain of nodes, where each node contains information like data and a pointer to the succeeding node in the chain.

Below is the internal structure of a linked list

Queues

Queue is another linear data structure that stores the element in a sequential manner.

FIRST IN FIRST OUT (FIFO) QUEUES

Stack

A stack is a data structure used to store a collection of objects. Individual items can be added and stored in a stack using a push operation.

LAST IN FIRST OUT (LIFO)

Trees

A tree is a hierarchical data structure consisting of vertices (nodes) and edges that connect them.

Hash

Hashing is a process used to uniquely identity objects and store each objects at some pre-calculated unique index called its “key”.

Trie

It provides fast retrieval, and is mostly used for searching words in a dictionary, providing auto suggestions in a search engine, and even for IP routing.

Graph

A graph is a set of nodes that are connected to each other in the form of a network. Nodes are also called vertices.

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Prasanna Brabourame

AI Engineer | Researcher | Open Source Enthusiast | Full Stack Dev | Blockchain | DEVOPS | Learner | Blogger | Speaker | Tech Geek