Introduction

In the previous chapter, we implemented different types of linear data structures to store and manage data in a linear fashion. In linear structures, we can traverse in, at most, two directions – forward or backward. However, the scope of these structures is very limited, and they can't be used to solve advanced problems. In this chapter, we'll explore a more advanced class of problems. We will see that the solutions we implemented previously are not good enough to be used directly. Due to this, we'll expand upon those data structures to make more complex structures that can be used to represent non-linear data.

After looking at these problems, we'll discuss basic solutions using the tree data structure. We'll implement different types of trees to solve different kinds of problems. After that, we'll have a look at a special type of tree called a heap, as well as its possible implementation and applications. Following that, we'll look...