- Definition: Data structure is a general computer science concept.
Its definition reads as follows on Wikipedia:
Data structure is a data organization, management, and storage format that enables efficient access and modification.
More precisely, a data structure is a collection of data values, the relationships among them, and the functions or operations that can be applied to the data.
- On the other hand, data type is a concept specific to a programming language. In a way, it is a concrete implementation of a data structure in a particular programming language (be it Python or any other language).
- The actual definition of what constitutes a "type" varies among programming languages. Talking about Python, there are basic data types like int, float, string etc. You can use the built-in types like list, set etc. which we will be covering in this session.
- Calling these data types as data structures won’t be wrong because there is no major difference between the two in Python.
Data Types in Python
- Before we proceed to discuss what data types in Python are, there are some basic questions that we would discuss. What is data?
- Let’s say you are going to meet a friend at her office. When you go to visit her office, the security guard asks you to make an entry in the register before you enter the office. A typical entry register asks for the following information –
| Visitor's name | Visitor's phone number | Visitor's address | Entry time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Karen | 32 000 000 | Leuven | 8:30 AM |
The above information that you just provided is data. |
| We see that the data entry in the previous slide has different varieties: |
Some are English letters,
Some are numerical digits, and
There are some special characters, dash (-) and colon ( : ).
In this example, our data is divided into 4 categories – name, phone number, address, and time.
This categorization of data, based on its characteristics & our needs, is called data types.
Some of the data types in python include:
Integer: whole numbers, positive or negative numbers. Eg: 100.
Float: Floating-point numbers are real numbers, rational or irrational. In most cases, this means numbers with decimal parts. Example: 123.45.
String: Strings are sequences of characters, or text, enclosed in quotes. Example: "any text", “karen”.
For further reading about operators and data types, visit: https://www.dummies.com/programming/python/python-all-in-one-for-dummies-cheat-sheet/
For practice and different data type examples, visit: https://www.w3schools.com/python/python_datatypes.asp
Getting the Data Type
You can get the data type of any object by using the type( ) function:
- Numerical Types: int (integer), float (decimal)
- Text Type: str (string)
- Boolean Type: bool (True or False)
