Advance Topics in DSA

Highlight a number of complex ideas and Python implementations when delving into more complex data structure and algorithm topics. These include basic data types like Sets, specialised map structures like Skip Lists and OrderedDict, and Text Processing algorithms. These subjects provide more effective or specialised methods of organising and working with data, going beyond simple data structures.
These advanced subjects are explained as follows:
Skip Lists
Sorted maps are implemented using skip lists, a probabilistic data structure . They are an enlargement of the normal map ADT, which removes a key-value pair (del M[k]), associates a value with a key (M[k] = v), and returns the value. Sorted maps also sort keys in an iteration and make it easier to find elements that are strictly less than (M.find lt(k)), less than or equal to (M.find le(k)), greater than (M.find gt(k)), or greater than or equal to (M.find ge(k)) a given key.
A Skip List’s structure consists of several connected list levels, each of which serves as a “express lane” for the level underneath it . Effective search and update operations, which normally take O(logn) anticipated time, are made possible by this multi-level organisation. Because their insertion method is random, even while their worst-case performance may be less than perfect, the likelihood of such behaviour is extremely low. In practice, optimised skip lists may outperform balanced search trees such as AVL trees, according to experimental findings. When ‘n’ is the number of items, the estimated space requirement for a skip list is O(n).
SkipSearch(k), a fundamental algorithm for skip lists, locates a place in the bottom list (S0) where the greatest key is less than or equal to k. In order to find the correct position, this entails beginning at a “start” position, scanning horizontally forward (next(p)), and descending down levels (below(p)).
OrderedDict
OrderedDict is a Python collections class. As a subclass of the hash-based dict class, this class maintains O(1) performance for primary map operations like fetching, setting, or removing entries by key. Its distinctive feature is that iterations sort items by insertion order, which is first-in, first-out.FIFO). Even if the value for an existing key is overwritten, this order is unaffected. This is not the same as a conventional Python dictionary (dict), which until Python 3.7 did not guarantee any specific order of its contents.
Code Example for OrderedDict:
from collections import OrderedDict
# Example Usage
od = OrderedDict()
od['one'] = 1
od['two'] = 2
od['three'] = 3
print("OrderedDict:")
for key, value in od.items():
print(key, value)
# Reordering example
od.move_to_end('one')
print("\nAfter reordering:")
for key, value in od.items():
print(key, value)
Output:
OrderedDict:
one 1
two 2
three 3
After reordering:
two 2
three 3
one 1
Sets
An unordered collection of unique objects is represented by an abstract data type (ADT) called a set. Important actions of a set S consist of:
- Adding e to the set has no effect if it’s already there.
- S.discard(e) excludes element e if present; otherwise, has no effect.
- e in S: Returns If e is in the set, then it is true.
- The number of elements in the set is returned by len(S).
- Iter(S): Produces a list of every element.
The mathematical concept of a subset underpins comparison operators like <, >, and ==, as sets do not guarantee element order. Additional actions include S.pop() (removes and returns an arbitrary element, raises KeyError if empty) and S.remove(e). For activities that call for distinct collections of objects, such creating a unique string collection in text processing, sets are essential.
Code Example for Sets:
# Example Usage
set1 = {1, 2, 3, 4}
set2 = {3, 4, 5, 6}
# Set operations
print("Union:", set1 | set2)
print("Intersection:", set1 & set2)
print("Difference:", set1 - set2)
print("Symmetric Difference:", set1 ^ set2)
Output:
Union: {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6}
Intersection: {3, 4}
Difference: {1, 2}
Symmetric Difference: {1, 2, 5, 6}
Text Processing
Basic algorithms are used in text processing to effectively analyse and work with massive text data volumes. It employs character strings as a model for text and draws attention to significant algorithmic design trends. Characters from a known alphabet (Σ) are usually assumed by algorithms, and asymptotic analysis may be affected by the alphabet’s size.
Important topics in text processing consist of:
Pattern-Matching Algorithms: Pattern-matching algorithms are used to look for a pattern in a larger text as a substring.
- Brute Force A often used yet frequently ineffective technique.
- The Boyer-Moore algorithm is a pattern-matching method that is optimised.
- Another effective pattern-matching method is the Knuth-Morris-Pratt (KMP) algorithm.
Special-Purpose Data Structures for Text: These structures arrange textual data to facilitate queries that are more effective.
- Tries (Prefix Trees) A trie is a data structure that resembles a tree and is used to hold associative arrays or dynamic sets of strings using strings as keys. Tracing a path from the root based on characters in a string X is the process of searching for it in a trie. X is a key if the path terminates at a leaf node.
- Standard Tries Simple implementation of a trie.
- Compressed Tries This variant compresses chains of single-child nodes into individual edges to guarantee that every internal node has at least two children.
- Suffix tries are used to solve issues such as locating instances of a pattern in a text.
Search Engine Indexing: Attempts are essential for putting search engines or book indexes into practice. Search engines use inverted files to arrange words and indices.
Edit Distance: The “Edit Distance” technique calculates how many additions, deletions, or replacements are needed to edit a string. An O(nm)-time method can calculate this for strings of length ‘n’ and’m’.
Example:
import re
text = "Learn advanced Python programming concepts like Skip Lists, Sets, and more!"
# Tokenizing words and counting frequency
tokens = re.findall(r'\b\w+\b', text.lower())
word_freq = {word: tokens.count(word) for word in tokens}
print("Tokens:", tokens)
print("Word Frequency:", word_freq)
if 'advanced' in tokens:
print("The word 'advanced' was found!")
Output:
Tokens: ['learn', 'advanced', 'python', 'programming', 'concepts', 'like', 'skip', 'lists', 'sets', 'and', 'more']
Word Frequency: {'learn': 1, 'advanced': 1, 'python': 1, 'programming': 1, 'concepts': 1, 'like': 1, 'skip': 1, 'lists': 1, 'sets': 1, 'and': 1, 'more': 1}
The word 'advanced' was found!
These more sophisticated subjects show how particular data structures and algorithms are designed to effectively address difficult issues, frequently surpassing the potential of general-purpose data structures.