Thanks, Abigail-II, for pointing out the vagueness in my question. The specific functionality that I am looking for at this point is essentially as you stated:

• The ability to define the data structure simply (preferably using an array or list).
• The ability to find out the name of the next or previous item based on the the current (or a named) item.

Although I currently do not need to insert or delete elements, I might need to in the future. However, since my lists will never be that long, and I would not do it that often, I could probably still use your suggestion (and rebuild the entire index when necessary) without any noticable performance issues.

In any case, it seems that you are advocating trying to use a data structure appropriate to the task, rather than relying on a generic structure that might be less suited. Am I understanding correctly?