116B Survey KH21

Linear Structure & Non-linear Structure in Data Structures

A data structure is linear if every item is related (or attatched) to its previous and next item(e.g.array, linked list) and it is non-linear if every item is attached to many other items in specific ways to reflect relationships(e.g, n-ary tree). In linear data structure data items are arranged in a linear sequence. In non-linear data structure data items are not in a sequence.