Question

First of all, sorry for the title. Someone please propose a better one, I really didn’t know how to express my question properly.

Basically, I’m just looking for the name of a data structure where the elements look like this (ignore the dots):

……5

….3…2

..4…1…6

9…2…3…1

I first thought it could be a certain kind of “tree”, but, as wikipedia says:

A tree is […] an acyclic connected graph where each node has zero or more children nodes and at most one parent node

Since there can be more than one parent by node in the data structure I’m looking for, it’s probably not a tree.

So, here’s my question:

What is the name of a data structure that can represent data with the following links between the elements? (/ and \ being the links, again, ignore the dots):

……5

…../..\

….3…2

…/..\./..\

..4…1…6

../.\./..\./..\

9…2…3…1

Answer 1

I think it isn’t totally wrong to call it a Tree, although “Digraph” (directed graph) would be a more proper term.

First of all, sorry for the title.
Someone please propose a better one, I
really didn’t know how to express my
question properly.

The title is fine, I LOL’d hard when I opened the question. I am going to start calling them “Bowling Pins” now 🙂

      5

    3   2

  4   1   6

9   2   3   1