Question

In an improved Union-Find data structure using pointers, how are disjoint sets represented?

a) Linked List
b) Array
c) Binary Tree
d) Hash Table

Answer 1

Disjoint sets in an improved Union-Find data structure using pointers are typically represented using arrays.

Step-by-step explanation:

In an improved Union-Find data structure using pointers, disjoint sets are typically represented using arrays. Each element in the array corresponds to a set, and the value stored at each index represents the parent of that set. The parent stores the index of the representative element of the set.

For example, if we have a set with elements {1, 2, 3}, and 1 is the representative element, then the array would be represented as [1, -1, -1, -1, -1], where -1 represents that the element is the representative element.

Using arrays to represent disjoint sets allows for efficient operations such as finding the representative element of a set, merging two sets, and finding if two elements belong to the same set.