Scribd
Upload
7 views

Linked List: Adding Citations To Reliable Sources

Linked lists are a data structure consisting of nodes linked together in a sequence. Each node contains data and a link to the next node. This allows efficient insertion or removal of elements from any position. Linked lists are simple and common, and can implement other data structures like lists, stacks, queues, and trees. The principal benefit is easy insertion and removal without reallocating memory, unlike arrays which require pre-declaring size. However, linked lists do not allow random access or efficient indexing like arrays.

Uploaded by

elasu85
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
7 views

Linked List: Adding Citations To Reliable Sources

Linked lists are a data structure consisting of nodes linked together in a sequence. Each node contains data and a link to the next node. This allows efficient insertion or removal of elements from any position. Linked lists are simple and common, and can implement other data structures like lists, stacks, queues, and trees. The principal benefit is easy insertion and removal without reallocating memory, unlike arrays which require pre-declaring size. However, linked lists do not allow random access or efficient indexing like arrays.

Uploaded by

elasu85
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 1

Linked list

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this
article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and
removed. (February 2014)
In computer science, a linked list is a data structure consisting of a group of nodes which together
represent a sequence. Under the simplest form, each node is composed of a data and
a reference (in other words, a link) to the next node in the sequence; more complex variants add
additional links. This structure allows for efficient insertion or removal of elements from any position
in the sequence.

A linked list whose nodes contain two fields: an integer value and a link to the next node. The last node is linked to a terminator used to
signify the end of the list.

Linked lists are among the simplest and most common data structures. They can be used to
implement several other common abstract data types, including lists (the abstract data
type), stacks, queues, associative arrays, and S-expressions, though it is not uncommon to
implement the other data structures directly without using a list as the basis of implementation.
The principal benefit of a linked list over a conventional array is that the list elements can easily be
inserted or removed without reallocation or reorganization of the entire structure because the data
items need not be stored contiguously in memory or on disk, while an array has to be declared in the
source code, before compiling and running the program. Linked lists allow insertion and removal of
nodes at any point in the list, and can do so with a constant number of operations if the link previous
to the link being added or removed is maintained during list traversal.
On the other hand, simple linked lists by themselves do not allow random access to the data, or any
form of efficient indexing. Thus, many basic operations such as obtaining the last node of the list
(assuming that the last node is not maintained as separate node reference in the list structure), or
finding a node that contains a given datum, or locating the place where a new node should be
inserted may require sequential scanning of most or all of the list elements. The advantages and
disadvantages of using linked lists are given below.

You might also like