Advanced Data Structures

We will start this chapter by discussing advanced data structures. Initially, we will be revisiting lists. Then, we will construct a stack and a queue, explore multiple-element membership checking to check whether the data is accurate, and throw a bit of functional programming in for good measure. Don't worry if all of this sounds intimidating. We will take things step by step, and you will feel confident about handling advanced data structures once you have finished this chapter.

Before we jump into constructing data structures, we'll look at a few methods to manipulate them.

Iterator

Iterators in Python are very useful when dealing with data as they allow you to parse the data one unit at a time. Iterators are stateful, which means it will be helpful to keep track of the previous state. An iterator is an object that implements the next method—meaning an iterator can iterate over collections such as lists, tuples, dictionaries,...