List of Stacks in C++ STL

Prerequisite: List, Stack

Lists are sequence containers that allow non-contiguous memory allocation. As compared to vector, list has slow traversal, but once a position has been found, insertion and deletion are quick.

Syntax:

list <Type> name_of_list;

Stack are a type of container adaptor with LIFO(Last In First Out) type of work, where a new element is added at one end and (top) an element is removed from that end only.

Syntax:

stack <Type> name_of_stack;

List of Stacks are a type of container which have a series of stacks, this is a two-dimensional container where N rows of list and M column of stacks, size of both dimension is non-fixed. which can be traversed and accessed using iterators.

Syntax:

list <stack <Type> > name_of_container(size);
where size is optional

Example:

list <stack <int> > ls(10);
size of list of stacks is 10

Insertion: Insertion in the list of the stack is done using the push() function.

Example:

C++

// Loop to push element
// into a stack
for
    i in[0, n]
    {
        s.push(i)
    }

// Push Stack into the list
ls.push_back(s);

Traversal: Traversal in a list of the stack is performed using iterators.

C++

// Loop to iterate over list
for (iterator it = ls.begin();
     it != ls.end(); it++) {

    // Stack of the List
    stack<int>
        st = *it;

    while (!st.empty()) {
        cout << st.top();
        st.pop();
    }
}

Above code traverses list<int> ls at each index using starting iterators ls.begin() and ending iterator ls.end(). For accessing the element it uses (*it) as stack are pointers pointing to elements in list <stack <int> > ls.

Below is the program to illustrate the insertion and traversal in lists of stacks:

C++

// C++ program for implementation
// of the lists of stack

#include <bits/stdc++.h>
using namespace std;

// Function for printing the
// elements in a list
void showlist(list<stack<int> > ls)
{

    // Traverse the list and
    // print row wise stack
    for (list<stack<int> >::iterator it1
         = ls.begin();
         it1 != ls.end(); ++it1) {

        // Copy rows in stack
        stack<int> it2 = *it1;

        // Print stack elements while
        // it is not empty
        while (!it2.empty()) {
            cout << it2.top() << " ";
            it2.pop();
        }
        cout << endl;
    }
}

// Driver Code
int main()
{
    // List of stacks
    list<stack<int> > ls;

    // Insert rows in list
    for (int i = 0; i < 10; ++i) {
        // Insert element in
        // stack as column
        stack<int> s;

        for (int j = i; j < 10; j++) {
            s.push(j);
        }

        ls.push_back(s);
    }

    cout << "List of stack is : \n";
    showlist(ls);

    return 0;
}

Output:

List of stack is : 
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 
9 8 7 6 5 4 
9 8 7 6 5 
9 8 7 6 
9 8 7 
9 8 
9