4.2.2 - Outline the standard operations of collections

Assessment objective 2

Exit skills:

• Explain the standard operations of collections

An array is a perfect choice when a programmer wishes to store the same type of information; a group of strings for example and they know in advance the number of items that they wish to store. But what happens when the programmer wishes to store integers, arrays, objects, booleans and strings in one data structure? The answer is to use collections because  some collections allow custom specification of the collection item elements. The most significant advantage of collections is that they act like a resizable array. The programmer does not need to  know in advance the number of items that will be placed in the data structure.

• IB question on collections - M2015 paper 1