Stack Introduction
Imagine a stack of plates. You add a new plate on top, and you remove the top plate first. This is Last In, First Out (LIFO) behavior. In computer science, a stack is a linear data structure that follows LIFO principle.
A stack has two primary operations:
- push – add an element to the top
- pop – remove the top element
- peek – view the top element without removing it
- isEmpty – check if stack is empty
Stacks are used in function call management (recursion), undo/redo, expression evaluation, and backtracking.
Here's a simple stack interface in Java:
public interface Stack<T> {
void push(T item);
T pop();
T peek();
boolean isEmpty();
int size();
}
Two Minute Drill
- Stack is a LIFO data structure.
- Main operations: push, pop, peek, isEmpty.
- Used in recursion, undo, expression evaluation, backtracking.
- Can be implemented using arrays or linked lists.
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