Chapter 1 - An Introduction to Collections, Generics, and the Timing Class

Summary

This book discusses the development and implementation of data structures and algorithms using C#. The data structures we use in this book are found in the .NET Framework class library System.Collections. In this chapter, we develop the concept of a collection by first discussing the implementation of our own Collection class (using the array as the basis of our implementation) and then by covering the Collection classes in the .NET Framework.

An important addition to C# 2.0 is generics. Generics allow the C# programmer to write one version of a function, either independently or within a class, without having to overload the function many times to allow for different data types. C# 2.0 provides a special library, System.Collections.Generic, that implements generics for several of the System.Collections data structures. This chapter will introduce the reader to generic programming.

Finally, this chapter introduces a custom-built class, the Timing class, which we will use in several chapters to measure the performance of a data structure and/or algorithm. This class will take the place of Big O analysis, not because Big O analysis isn't important, but because this book takes a more practical approach to the study of data structures and algorithms.

COLLECTIONS DEFINED

A collection is a structured data type that stores data and provides operations for adding data to the collection, removing data from the collection, updating data in the collection, as well as operations for setting and returning the values of different attributes of the collection.