What are the main advantages and disadvantages of the Stack data structure?

Stack — is a data structure with the LIFO (Last In, First Out) principle, where the last added element is retrieved first.

Advantages:

• Simple to implement and use.
• Fast access to the top element (push, pop, peek operations are performed in O(1)).
• Well-suited for tasks related to reverse order processing, such as tree traversal, undo actions, parsing.

Disadvantages:

• Limited access: only the top element can be worked with, arbitrary access is not possible.
• The size of the stack may be limited (for example, call stack in a program), which can lead to overflow.

Example in Go:

package main
import "fmt"

type Stack []int

func (s *Stack) Push(v int) {
    *s = append(*s, v)
}

func (s *Stack) Pop() (int, bool) {
    if len(*s) == 0 {
        return 0, false
    }
    index := len(*s) - 1
    elem := (*s)[index]
    *s = (*s)[:index]
    return elem, true
}

func main() {
    var s Stack
    s.Push(10)
    s.Push(20)
    fmt.Println(s.Pop()) // 20, true
    fmt.Println(s.Pop()) // 10, true
}