Stack Implementaion in Java Using Character Array

In my previous post we talked about basic stack terminologies and simple stack implementation using integer array.

In this post I will be sharing my code for a stack implementation which can hold char values in other words stack implemented using char array in java.

Sections in this post:  

1. char Array Based Implementation of stack. 

 Let see the code directly as it is self explanatory

public class StackUsingCharArray {


    // Every stack has a maximum capacity i.e. number of objects it can hold,
    private static final int CAPACITY = 10;
    
    // Top will always point to most recently added element in stack therefore 
    // top = -1 implies stack is empty
     private    int top = -1;
       //array to hold stack elemnts.lt is initialized to capacity of stack
    private    char[] stackArray = new char[CAPACITY];

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        StackUsingCharArray stack = new StackUsingCharArray();
        stack.pop();
        stack.push('a');
        stack.push('b');
        stack.push('c');
        stack.push('d');
        stack.push('e');
        stack.printStack();       
        System.out.println(stack.pop());
        System.out.println(stack.pop());
        System.out.println(stack.pop());
        System.out.println(stack.pop());
        System.out.println(stack.pop());
        System.out.println(stack.pop());
        System.out.println(stack.pop());
    }
    public boolean isEmpty() {
        return top == -1;
    }

    public boolean push(char data) {
        
         //Check if stack is full
         //If it is full then we show Stack overflow message
         
        if(isFull()) {
            System.out.println("Stack overflow");
            return false;
        }

        else {
            stackArray[++top] =data;
            return true;
        }
    }
    public Character pop() {
        
         // Check if stack is empty
         //If it is empty then we show Stack underflow message 
         
        if(isEmpty()) {
            System.out.println("Stack underflow");
            return null;
        }
        else {
            //decrementing top by one to make second element from top as top element
            top --;
            //we will be returning top+1 value from array as we have already made 
            //top to point second element in stack
            
            return stackArray[top+1];
        }
    }
    public Character peek() {
        // we implement peek by first popping top element then pushing it back
        Character element = null ;
        if(!isEmpty()){
            element = pop();
            push(element);
        }
        return element;
    }
    
    // this method just gives view of the stack. 
    //As there are only two operation for stack i.e. push and pop
    //so in theory we can never print a stack 
    //without calling those two methods
     
    public void printStack() {
        System.out.print("[");
        for(int i = top; i>=0;i--){
            System.out.print("    "+stackArray[i]);
        }
        System.out.println("    ]");
    }
   
    public boolean isFull() {
        return top == CAPACITY -1;
    }
} 

 If we run the program we will get output like this:

Output

================================================================================

Stack underflow
[    e    d    c    b    a    ]
e
d
c
b
a
Stack underflow
null
Stack underflow
null

 

Please share your comments if you find anything incorrect, or you want to share more information about the topic discussed above.

 

For further reading:

practice questions on stack

Stack Implementation using int array

Stack Implementation using array of strings

Stack implementation using link list 

Stack implementation by link list node, 

Stack implementation using doubly link list 

Stack implementation by doubly link list node . 

For complete listing see data structure and algorithm page