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How To Create A Stack in Python – A Comprehensive Guide

In computer science, think of a stack like a pile of plates. When you add a new plate, it goes on top of the pile, and when you take one off, you start from the top.

So, a stack has two main actions: you can add something to the top of the pile (like adding a plate), and you can take something off the top (like removing a plate).

This stack concept is handy for many computer tasks, like searching through data. This article will explain how to use stacks in Python, which is a programming language, to solve problems more easily.

Stack

Stack Implementation Planning

Before we dive into creating our stack, it’s essential to think about what we want it to do. Sure, we need it to have functions like adding items (.push()) and removing them (.pop()), but why stop there?

We might also want to know how many items are in our stack using Python’s len() function. It’s handy to have this because it helps us avoid issues when our stack is empty. Plus, having a way to peek at the top item without taking it off (.peek()) would be quite useful.

Now, let’s consider what happens when we try to peek or pop from an empty stack. We could return a special value like “NaN,” but that could lead to tricky problems later on, especially if we accidentally add NaN to our stack. Instead, it’s smarter to raise an exception when we try to peek or pop from an empty stack. This way, we catch the problem early during testing and can fix our code accordingly.

Read more Below

https://codemagnet.in/2024/03/14/how-to-create-a-stack-in-python-a-comprehensive-guide/

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