The Stack: A Crucial Data Structure in Computer Science

A stack is a fundamental data structure widely used in computer science to store and manage data in a last-in, first-out (LIFO) manner. Imagine a stack of dishes where you can only remove the top one — the last dish added is the first to be taken off. This simple principle makes stacks highly effective for a wide range of computational tasks.

Core Stack Operations

A stack revolves around two primary operations:

1. Push: This adds an element to the top of the stack. In our dish stack example, it’s like placing a new dish on top of the pile.

2. Pop: This removes the top element from the stack, meaning the most recently added item is the first one out.

Stacks also support other common operations like:

- Peek (or Top): This operation allows you to look at the top element of the stack without removing it.
- isEmpty: This checks whether the stack is empty or contains elements.

These fundamental operations make stacks efficient for certain tasks requiring strict order control.

Ways to Implement a Stack

There are two common methods to implement a stack:

1. Array-based Stack: In this approach, a fixed-size array is used to store elements, and a pointer keeps track of the top of the stack. This method is easy to…