The time complexity for pushing and popping elements in a stack implemented using an array is O(1), constant time.
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Push Operation:
- When pushing an element onto the stack, you add it to the top of the stack, and the operation involves incrementing the stack pointer and assigning the new element to the location at the top. This operation is performed in constant time.
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Pop Operation:
- When popping an element from the stack, you remove the element from the top of the stack by decrementing the stack pointer. This operation also takes constant time.
The reason for the constant time complexity is that these operations involve simple arithmetic operations (incrementing or decrementing a pointer) and do not depend on the size of the stack. Whether the stack has 10 elements or 1,000 elements, the push and pop operations take the same amount of time.
It's important to note that these time complexities assume that the array used to implement the stack has sufficient capacity, and resizing operations are not performed frequently. If resizing is required (e.g., when the array becomes full), it may involve copying elements to a larger array, which could result in an O(n) time complexity for that particular operation. However, in typical stack implementations, resizing is an infrequent operation.