Definition of Data Structure

A data structure is a class of data that can be characterized by its organization and the operations that are defined on it. Hence

A data structure is a set of values along with the set of operations permitted on them. It is also required to specify the semantics of the operations permitted on the data values, and this is done by using a set of axioms, which describes how these operations work, and therefore a data structure is made of:

• A set of data values.
• A set of functions specifying the operations permitted on the data values.
• A set of axioms describing how these operations work.

Data Structure Operations:

• Traversing: Accessing each record exactly once so that certain terms in the record may proceed.
• Searching: Finding the location of the record with a given key value.
• Inserting: Adding a new record to the structure.
• Deleting: Removing a record from the structure.
• Sorting: Arranging the records either in ascending or descending order according to some key.
• Merging: Combining the records in two different sorted files into a single sorted file.
• Copying: Records in one file are copied to another file.