algorithm walkthrough learning how to design good algorithms can be assisted greatly by using structured approach to tracing its behaviour in most cases tracing an algorithm only requires single table in most cases tracing is not enoughyou will also want to use diagram of the data structure your algorithm operates on this diagram will be used to visualise the problem more effectively seeing things visually can help you understand the problem quickerand better the trace table will store information about the variables used in your algorithm the values within this table are constantly updated when the algorithm mutates them such an approach allows you to attain history of the various values each variable has held you may also be able to infer patterns from the values each variable has contained so that you can make your algorithm more efficient we have found this approach both simpleand powerful by combining visual representation of the problem as well as having history of past values generated by the algorithm it can make understandingand solving problems much easier in this we will show you how to work through both iterativeand recursive algorithms using the technique outlined iterative algorithms we will trace the ispalindrome algorithm (defined in ss as our example iterative walkthrough before we even look at the variables the algorithm usesfirst we will look at the actual data structure the algorithm operates on it should be pretty obvious that we are operating on stringbut how is this representeda string is essentially block of contiguous memory that consists of some char data typesone after the other each character in the string can be accessed via an index much like you would do when accessing items within an array the picture should be presenting itself string can be thought of as an array of characters for our example we will use ispalindrome to operate on the string "never odd or evennow we know how the string data structure is representedand the value of the string we will operate on let' go ahead and draw it as shown in figure