Skip to main content

Performance of a Data Structure


Why data structures matter

The fact is that programs are all about processing data. Data structures are referred to how data is organized which affects the time of executing a program.

How to measure the performance of a data structure

In order to measure "how fast"/efficiency/performance of a data structure, we measure the performance of its operations. There are four basic operations including reading, searching, insertion, and deletion. A pure time consuming is not used for the measuring because it is not reliable depending on the hardware that it is run on. But instead, we use the term time complexity which refers to how many steps an operation takes.

An example of how a single rule can affect efficiency

Let's compare two data structures: Array and Set (with N elements).

1. Array

- Reading: 1 step (because the computer has the ability to jump to any particular index in the array)
- Searching: N steps (the worst case with linear search)
- Insertion: N + 1 steps (the worst case inserting at index 0: N steps of right-shifts + 1 step of insertion)
- Deletion: N steps (the worst case deleting at index 0: N-1 steps of left-shifts + 1 step of deletion)

2. Set

- Reading: 1 step
- Searching: N steps
- Insertion: best case: N + 1 steps; worst case: 2N + 1 steps (every insert first requires a search)
- Deletion: N steps

NOTE: I mentioned the set by setting up from an array. There is another way to set up a set by a hash table.

Reference:



[1]. Jay Wengrow | A Common-Sense Guide to Data Structures and Algorithms: Level Up Your Core Programming Skills

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

JSF, Primefaces - Invoking Application Code Even When Validation Failed

A use case I have a form which has requirements as follow: - There are some mandatory fields. - Validation is triggered when changing value on each field. - A button "Next" is enable only when all fields are entered. It turns to disabled if any field is empty. My first approach I defined a variable "isDisableNext" at a backend bean "Controller" for dynamically disabling/enabling the "Next" button by performing event "onValueChange", but, it had a problem: <h:form id="personForm"> <p:outputLabel value="First Name" for="firstName"/> <p:inputText id="firstName" value="#{person.firstName}" required="true"> <p:ajax event="change" listener="#{controller.onValueChange}" update="nextButton"/> </p:inputText> <p:outputLabel value="Last Name" for="lastName"/> <p:i...

Junit - Test fails on French or German string assertion

In my previous post about building a regex to check a text without special characters but allow German and French . I met a problem that the unit test works fine on my machine using Eclipse, but it was fail when running on Jenkins' build job. Here is my test: @Test public void shouldAllowFrenchAndGermanCharacters(){ String source = "ÄäÖöÜüß áÁàÀâÂéÉèÈêÊîÎçÇ"; assertFalse(SpecialCharactersUtils.isExistSpecialCharater(source)); } Production code: public static boolean isExistNotAllowedCharacters(String source){ Pattern regex = Pattern.compile("^[a-zA-Z_0-9_ÄäÖöÜüß áÁàÀâÂéÉèÈêÊîÎçÇ]*$"); Matcher matcher = regex.matcher(source); return !matcher.matches(); } The result likes the following: Failed tests: SpecialCharactersUtilsTest.shouldAllowFrenchAndGermanCharacters:32 null A guy from stackoverflow.com says: "This is probably due to the default encoding used for your Java source files. The ö in the string literal in the J...

Google I/O 2017 Notes

WOW! How meaningful this below video explains about the name of  "I/O". Sundar Pichai talked a lot of Machine Learning Machine Learning is a very hot trend these days. Google uses it for their products. Google Assistant: Easily booking an online meal by talking with Google Assistant like a staff of partners, for example. Google Home: Hands-free calling. Google Photos: sharing suggestion, shared library, photo books and google lens. Youtube: 360 degree video, live stream. Kotlin became an official programming language for Android https://kotlinlang.org I'm on the way to Kotlin! ^^ Reference: [1]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2VF8tmLFHw

My must-have apps for daily work

There is no doubt that cool apps can help us be more productive and enjoyable at work. For the time being, I really love the following apps which are used by me almost every day. 1. A personal Kanban In fact, a personal kanban is the most useful app for me. Why does it matter? It is not just a to-do list, but it keeps me motivated every day because it helps me be able to know what my "big picture" is. I usually set up my plans together with a path to reach them.  KanbanFlow  is my preferred tool. KanbanFlow 2. A terminal Needless to say, a terminal is a must-have app for every developer, especially the ones use macOS/Linux. Due to its importance, I love to decorate and enhance it to be super exciting with various tools such as  iTerm ,  oh-my- zsh , and  thefuck . ;) iTerm + oh-my-zsh 3. A documentation "ecosystem" As a developer, I can not remember all things that I have experimented a day. Moreover, a document is really useful for sharing an...