Dynamic Data Structures

Abstract

Much of our experience in both programming and the real world concerns the manipulation of the ‘small rather than the large’. For this we are to be thankful, for once we depart the realm of the small, many trivial operations take on a frightening complexity requiring painstaking organisation. The lifting of an object weighing 1 kg is trivial, 50 kg is difficult but possible, 2500 kg is, for the average human, impossible. A ‘mere’ quantitative change causes a qualitative change in the nature of the problem. We must expect therefore that once we include the ‘large’ in a problem we are most likely introducing with it a number of difficulties. This certainly applies to data structures which are in some sense ‘large’.