Container (abstract data type)

In computer science, a container is a class, a data structure,[1][2] or an abstract data type (ADT) 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 and complexity, and provide flexibility in choosing the right implementation for any given scenario.

Overview

Containers can be characterized by the following three properties:

Container classes are expected to implement methods to do the following:

Containers are sometimes implemented in conjunction with iterators.

Single value and associative containers

Containers can be divided into two groups.

Single value containers

Each object is stored independently in the container and it is accessed directly or with an iterator.

Associative containers

An associative array, map, or dictionary is a container composed of (key,value) pairs, such that each key appears at most once in the container. The key is used to find the value, the object, if it is stored in the container.

Graphic containers

Widget toolkits use special widgets also called Containers to group the other widgets together (windows, panels, ...). Apart from their graphical properties, they have the same type of behavior as container classes, as they keep a list of their child widgets, and allow to add, remove, or retrieve widgets amongst their children.

Implementations

See also

References

  1. Paul 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 on Oct 04, 2011.
  2. Entry data structure in the Encyclopædia Britannica (2009) Online entry Accessed on Oct 04, 2011.
  3. "PL/SQL Collections and Records". Retrieved 2013-04-20.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.