(definition)
Definition: An area of storage where items with a common property are stored. Typically tree data structures and sort algorithms use many buckets, one for each group of items. Usually buckets are kept on disk.
Generalization (I am a kind of ...)
bag.
Aggregate parent (I am a part of or used in ...)
radix sort, bucket sort, elastic-bucket trie, hash heap, extendible hashing.
Note: A bucket is used when a number of items need to be kept together, but the order among them is not important. Conceptually it is a bag (rather than a set).
Author: PEB
If you have suggestions, corrections, or comments, please get in touch with Paul Black.
Entry modified 8 January 2004.
HTML page formatted Mon Feb 2 13:10:39 2015.
Cite this as:
Paul E. Black, "bucket", in
Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures [online], Vreda Pieterse and Paul E. Black, eds. 8 January 2004. (accessed TODAY)
Available from: http://www.nist.gov/dads/HTML/bucket.html