DSA Concepts for Interview (Simple & In-Depth)
1. Arrays
- Arrays are collections of items stored at contiguous memory locations.
- Operations: Traversal, Insertion, Deletion, Searching.
- Time Complexity:
- Access: O(1)
- Search/Insert/Delete: O(n)
- Important Problems: Two Sum, Kadane's Algorithm, Sliding Window problems.
2. Strings
- Strings are arrays of characters.
- Immutable in many languages (e.g., Java, Python).
- Common Techniques: Two Pointers, Hashing, Sliding Window.
- Important Problems: Palindromes, Anagrams, Substrings.
3. Linked Lists
- A linear data structure where elements point to the next.
- Types: Singly, Doubly, Circular.
- Operations: Insertion, Deletion, Traversal.
- Key Problems: Reverse Linked List, Detect Cycle, Merge Two Lists.
4. Stacks and Queues
- Stack: LIFO (Last In First Out). Use cases: undo, recursion.
DSA Concepts for Interview (Simple & In-Depth)
- Queue: FIFO (First In First Out). Use cases: scheduling, buffers.
- Variants: Deque, Priority Queue.
- Key Problems: Valid Parentheses, Min Stack, Sliding Window Maximum.
5. Trees & Binary Trees
- Tree: A non-linear, hierarchical structure.
- Binary Tree: Each node has at most 2 children.
- Traversals: Inorder, Preorder, Postorder.
- Important Problems: Diameter, Symmetric Tree, LCA.
6. Binary Search Trees (BST)
- BST: A binary tree where left < root < right.
- Operations: Insert, Search, Delete in O(log n) average time.
- Key Problems: Validate BST, Kth Smallest Element.
7. Heaps (Priority Queue)
- Complete binary tree, max-heap or min-heap.
- Use: Efficiently get min/max in O(1), insert/delete in O(log n).
- Problems: Top K Elements, Heap Sort, Median in Stream.
8. Hashing (Hash Maps & Sets)
- Maps key to a value using a hash function.
DSA Concepts for Interview (Simple & In-Depth)
- Average time: O(1) for search, insert, delete.
- Important Problems: Two Sum, Subarrays with Sum K, Isomorphic Strings.
9. Recursion & Backtracking
- Recursion: Function calls itself to solve smaller subproblems.
- Backtracking: Explore all possibilities, revert changes if needed.
- Problems: N-Queens, Sudoku Solver, Subset Sum.
10. Dynamic Programming (DP)
- Break problems into subproblems and store results.
- Types: Memoization (Top-Down), Tabulation (Bottom-Up).
- Problems: 0/1 Knapsack, Longest Subsequence, Coin Change.
11. Greedy Algorithms
- Make the best choice at each step.
- Doesn't always give optimal solution, works for specific cases.
- Problems: Activity Selection, Huffman Coding, Fractional Knapsack.
12. Graphs
- Represented as adjacency list/matrix.
- Traversals: BFS, DFS.
- Algorithms: Dijkstra's, Floyd-Warshall, Kruskal's, Prim's.
DSA Concepts for Interview (Simple & In-Depth)
- Problems: Connected Components, Shortest Path, Cycle Detection.
13. Tries
- Tree-like structure to store words (prefix tree).
- Fast retrieval of strings in O(L) where L is length of word.
- Problems: Auto-complete, Word Dictionary, Prefix Matching.
14. Sliding Window & Two Pointers
- Efficiently process arrays/subarrays using two pointers.
- Fixed/variable size window techniques.
- Problems: Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters, Max Sum Subarray.
15. Bit Manipulation
- Work at bit level using operators (&, |, ^, <<, >>).
- Useful for optimization and problems with binary constraints.
- Problems: Single Number, Counting Bits, Subsets.
