Abstract The asynchronous nature of the data flow model of computations allows exploitation of maximum inherent parallelism in many application programs. However, before the data flow model of computations can become a viable alternative to the control flow model of computations, one has to find practical solutions to some major problems such as efficient handling of data structures. This article introduces a new model for handling data structures in a data flow environment. The proposed model combines constant time access capabilities of vectors as well as the flexibility inherent in the concept of pointers. This allows a careful balance between copying and sharing to optimize the storage and the processing overhead incurred during the operations on data structures. Using simulation, we present a comparative analysis of our model against other data structure models proposed in literature.