Maps (Dictionaries) & Sets

As we journey down the lane of data structures, you may or may not have noticed a pattern for how we access data. Since the underlying data storage we have used have been arrays, we have had to rely heavily on using numeric type indexing to retrieve values. Even though in stacks and queues we were only interested items at the top or front, indirectly we were still using some sort of indexing to get those item values. Also when we did traversals in our data structure, it was based on indexing. While this has served us well, sometimes you want to put more meaning into how you retrieve values. Asking for items[0], doesn’t really give a clear definition of what is being asked for. Read More