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CSa fun quiz for today on stacks and queues. letβs see whoβs cooked?
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Stacks and queues are both linear data structures, but they differ in how elements are accessed.
A stack follows Last In, First Out (LIFO) β the most recent item added is the first one removed. This is why stacks are used for things like function calls, undo operations, and recursion. Push and pop operations are typically O(1).
A queue follows First In, First Out (FIFO) β the first item added is the first one removed. Queues are common in scheduling, buffering, and traversal algorithms. Enqueue and dequeue are also O(1).
BFS (Breadth-First Search) uses a queue. It explores a graph level by level, visiting all neighbors before moving deeper. This makes BFS ideal for finding the shortest path in unweighted graphs. Its time complexity is O(V + E).
DFS (Depth-First Search) uses a stack (either explicitly or via recursion). It goes as deep as possible before backtracking, which is useful for detecting cycles, topological sorting, and connected components. Its time complexity is also O(V + E).
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