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Concept
Container (abstract data type)
Summary
In computer science, a container is a class or a data structurePaul E. Black (ed.), entry for data structure in Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures. US National Institute of Standards and Technology.15 December 2004. Accessed 4 Oct 2011. whose instances are collections of other objects. In other words, they store objects in an organized way that follows specific access rules.
The size of the container depends on the number of objects (elements) it contains. Underlying (inherited) implementations of various container types may vary in size, complexity and type of language, but in many cases they provide flexibility in choosing the right implementation for any given scenario.
Container data structures are commonly used in many types of programming languages.
Containers can be characterized by the following three properties:
access, that is the way of accessing the objects of the container. In the case of arrays, access is done with the array index. In the case of stacks, access is done according to the LIFO (last in, first out) order and in the case of queues it is done according to the FIFO (first in, first out) order;
storage, that is the way of storing the objects of the container;
traversal, that is the way of traversing the objects of the container.
Container classes are expected to implement CRUD-like methods to do the following:
create an empty container (constructor);
insert objects into the container;
delete objects from the container;
delete all the objects in the container (clear);
access the objects in the container;
access the number of objects in the container (count).
Containers are sometimes implemented in conjunction with iterators.
Containers may be classified as either single-value containers or associative containers''.
Single-value containers store each object independently. Objects may be accessed directly, by a language loop construct (e.g. for loop) or with an iterator.
An associative container uses an associative array, map, or dictionary, composed of key-value pairs, such that each key appears at most once in the container.
Official source
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