Introduction to Stack
- A stack is a linear data structure in computer science that follows the Last-In-First-Out (LIFO) principle. It is a data structure in which the insertion and removal of elements can only be performed at one end, which is called the top of the stack.
- In a stack, elements are pushed onto the top of the stack, and elements are popped off from the top of the stack. The last element that is pushed onto the stack is the first one to be popped off, hence it implies the LIFO principle.
The stack operations can be summarized as follows:
- push: Add an element to the top of the stack
- pop: Remove the element from the top of the stack
- top: Get the value of the element at the top of the stack
- empty: Check if the stack is empty
A stack can be implemented using an array, a linked list, or a dynamic array (such as a vector in C++ or ArrayList in Java). In programming, stacks are used to implement recursive algorithms, undo/redo functionality, expression evaluation, and more.
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