Welcome to the official Data Structure Lab Repository for BS (AI) – Group A & Group B. This repository contains all lab tasks, starter code, assignments, and additional resources for the course.

Course Instructor: Syed Shayan Ali Shah Course Duration: 16 September – 15 January Lecture Days: Thursday & Friday (Weekly) Programming Language: C++

This lab focuses on hands-on implementation of core data structures using C++. Students will learn how data is organized, manipulated, and traversed in memory, using both array-based and linked representations.

We will follow the textbook Fundamentals of Data Structures in C++ by Horowitz, Sahni, and Mehta and cover the following topics:

1. Pointers Refresher

   • Dereferencing
   • Dynamic Memory Allocation (new, delete)
   • Dangling Pointers & Memory Leaks

2. List Data Structures

   • List Operations
   • Array-based List Implementation

3. Linked Lists

   • Creating Nodes
   • Linking Nodes via Pointers
   • Insertion, Searching, Deletion
   • Singly, Doubly & Circular Lists

4. Stacks

   • Array-based Implementation
   • Linked List Implementation
   • Applications: Expression Conversion, Postfix Evaluation, Bracket Matching

5. Queues

   • Simple & Circular Queues
   • Linked List Implementation
   • Simulation Problems

6. Recursion & Trees

   • Binary Trees, BSTs
   • Traversals, Applications
   • AVL Trees (Insertion & Deletion)
   • Expression Trees, Huffman Coding

7. Heaps, Hashing, and Graphs

   • Heap Operations
   • Hash Functions, Collisions
   • Graph Representations
   • BFS and DFS Traversals

• Weekly Updates: The repository will be updated weekly before each lecture with:

  • Lab problems
  • Starter code / skeletons
  • Practice exercises
  • Additional notes and resources

• Student Workflow:

  1. Pull or download the latest lab task from GitHub before class.
  2. Complete the task during the lab session.
  3. Submit your solution (if required) according to instructions given in class.

• Compiler: g++ / any C++17 compliant compiler
• IDE: (Recommended) Code::Blocks / Visual Studio Code
• GitHub: Students must know how to clone, pull, and commit code.

• This repository is continuously evolving — check for updates every Wednesday evening.
• Focus on writing clean, well-commented code.
• Follow best memory management practices — avoid memory leaks and dangling pointers.

By the end of this lab, students will:

• Gain confidence in implementing data structures from scratch.
• Understand memory management and pointer manipulation in C++.
• Learn to solve real-world problems using data structures.
• Develop clean, maintainable, and efficient C++ code.