Difference between Stack and Tree

Last Updated : 14 Dec, 2020

Stack: A Stack is a linear data structure in which elements can be inserted and deleted only from one side of the list, called the top. Insertion is called push operation and deletion is called pop operation in case of the stack. The order of insertion and deletion may be LIFO(Last In First Out) i.e., the element inserted latest to the stack will also be inserted first. In stack, the track of the last element present in the list is tracked with a pointer called top. Below is the diagrammatic representation of the same:

Tree: A Tree tree is a finite set of one or more nodes such that:

There is a specially designated node called root.
The remaining nodes are partitioned into N>=0 disjoint sets T₁, T₂, T₃, …, T_N, where T₁, T₂, T₃, …, T_N is called the subtree of the root.

Each node has a specific parent and may or may not have a child node. Each node contains a value and references to the children. It’s a kind of graph data structure but does not have cycles and is fully connected. The concept of a tree is represented in the below diagram:

Below is the tabular difference between the Stack and Tree:

S No.	Parameter	Stack	Tree
1	Basic Nature	Linear Data Structure	Non-Linear Data Structure
2	Base Notion	Top of the stack	The root of the Tree
3	Successor	Element pushed before the reference element	The notion of child and parent exists
4	Order of Insertion	Elements inserted on the TOP of the stack	Depends on the type of tree.
5	Order of Deletion	Elements deleted from the TOP of the stack	Depends on the type of tree.
6	Insertion Complexity	O(1)	Depends on the type for example AVL- O(log₂N).
7	Deletion Complexity	O(1)	Depends on the type for example AVL- O(log₂N).
8	Searching	O(1)	Depends on the type for example AVL- O(log₂N).
9	Finding Min	O(N)	Depends on the type for example Min Heap- O(log₂N).
10	Finding Max	O(N)	Depends on the type for example Min Heap- O(log₂N).
11	IsEmpty	O(1)	Mostly O(1)
12	Implementation	Using arrays and linked list	Can be implemented using array and user-defined type of nodes
13	Types	No types exist	Many types like Binary Tree, AVL Tree, nary Tree, etc.
14	Applications	Expression evaluation, Backtracking, Memory management, etc.	Fast search, insert, delete, etc.

Suggest improvement

Create Balanced Binary Tree using its Leaf Nodes without using extra space

Difference Between Graph and Tree

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Generic Trees (N-ary Tree)

Binary Tree

Ternary Tree

Binary Search Tree

Ternary Search Tree

AVL Tree

B tree and B+ tree

Red Black Tree

Interval Tree

2-3-4 Tree

Balanced Tree

Tree vs Other Data Structures

Comparison between different Trees