Design of efficient data structure must take operations to be performed on the data structures into account. The most commonly used operations on data structure are broadly categorized into following types.
- Create: The create operation results in reserving memory for program elements. This can be done by declaration statement. Creation of data structure may take place either during compile-time or run-time. malloc() function of C language is used for creation.
- Destroy: Destroy operation destroys memory space allocated for specified data structure. free() function of C language is used to destroy data structure.
- Selection: Selection operation deals with accessing a particular data within a data structure.
- Updation: It updates or modifies the data in the data structure.
- Searching: It finds the presence of desired data item in the list of data items, it may also find the locations of all elements that satisfy certain conditions.
- Sorting: Sorting is a process of arranging all data items in a data structure in a particular order, say for example, either in ascending order or in descending order.
- Merging: Merging is a process of combining the data items of two different sorted list into a single sorted list.
- Splitting: Splitting is a process of partitioning single list to multiple list.
- Traversal: Traversal is a process of visiting each and every node of a list in systematic manner.
