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Stacks

Stack data structure

A Stack is a data structure that supports two basic operations: pushing a new item to the top of the stack and popping a single item from the top of the stack.

In order to implement a stack using a node class, we have to store a node that is currently referencing the top of the stack and update it during the push and pop operations.

from node import Node
class Stack:
def __init__(self, limit=1000):
self.top_item = None
self.size = 0
self.limit = limit
def push(self, value):
if self.has_space():
item = Node(value)
item.set_next_node(self.top_item)
self.top_item = item
self.size += 1
else:
print("All out of space!")
def pop(self):
if self.size > 0:
item_to_remove = self.top_item
self.top_item = item_to_remove.get_next_node()
self.size -= 1
return item_to_remove.get_value()
else:
print("This stack is totally empty.")
def peek(self):
if self.size > 0:
return self.top_item.get_value()
else:
print("Nothing to see here!")
def has_space(self):
return self.limit > self.size
def is_empty(self):
return self.size == 0

Stack overflow

Every stack has a size that determines how many nodes it can accommodate. Attempting to push a node in a full stack will result in a stack overflow. The program may crash due to a stack overflow.

A stack is illustrated in the given image. stackA.push(xg) will result in a stack overflow since the stack is already full.

stack overflow

The stack data structure

A stack is a data structure that follows a last in, first out (LIFO) protocol. The latest node added to a stack is the node which is eligible to be removed first. If three nodes (a, b and, c) are added to a stack in this exact same order, the node c must be removed first. The only way to remove or return the value of the node a is by removing the nodes c and b.

Main methods of a stack data structure

The stack data structure has three main methods: push(), pop() and peek(). The push() method adds a node to the top of the stack. The pop() method removes a node from the top of the stack. The peek() method returns the value of the top node without removing it from the stack.

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