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Lately I have been looking around for a formal definition of a what a data structure is. I cannot find neither a paper, nor a book with such a definition. Even the famous "The Art of Computer Programming" is missing one. Even for just a linked data structure, e.g., binary search tree, I couldn't find one.

So, is there one? Perhaps a paper that is talking about it?

By formal definition I'm thinking of something like "A data structure is a tuple (Op, El, ..) where ...".

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    $\begingroup$ Abstract Data Type? $\endgroup$ – Kaveh May 22 '15 at 2:31
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    $\begingroup$ I think this survey might be relevant: "Cell probe complexity" cs.umd.edu/~gasarch/BLOGPAPERS/cellprobesurvey.pdf $\endgroup$ – Thatchaphol May 22 '15 at 3:07
  • $\begingroup$ @Kaveh I'm interested in the concrete implementations of abstract data types. ("This contrasts with data structures, which are concrete representations of data, ..."). $\endgroup$ – foobar May 22 '15 at 9:08
  • $\begingroup$ It is not clear what you are really looking for. ADT is exactly the kind of the thing you describe in the last paragraph. A data structure is just an implementation of an ADT, not what you describe in the post. I don't see why this doesn't answer your question. $\endgroup$ – Kaveh May 22 '15 at 16:04
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    $\begingroup$ I think closing this was short-sighted. The relationship between a data structure and an abstract data type is non-trivial. As is the question of what precisely a data structure is. $\endgroup$ – zenna Feb 14 '18 at 8:00
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Data structures is nothing but the ways how data of different kinds can be structured in a systematic way. The actual definition may be somewhat lengthy and descriptive which can be found on different sources. But it is all about defining structures of your data that will satisfy your need to solve any particular problem.

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