Linked list

In computer science, a linked list is a data structure that consists of a sequence of data records such that in each record there is a field that contains a reference (i.e., a link) to the next record in the sequence.

Singly-linked-list.svg
A linked list whose nodes contain two fields: an integer value and a link to the next node

Linked lists are among the simplest and most common data structures; they provide an easy implementation for several important abstract data structures, including stacks, queues, associative arrays, and symbolic expressions.

The principal benefit of a linked list over a conventional array is that the order of the linked items may be different from the order that the data items are stored in memory or on disk. For that reason, linked lists allow insertion and removal of nodes at any point in the list, with a constant number of operations.

On the other hand, 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, or finding a node that contains a given datum, or locating the place where a new node should be inserted — may require scanning most of the list elements.

Linked lists can be implemented in most languages. Languages such as Lisp and Scheme have the data structure built in, along with operations to access the linked list. Procedural languages, such as C, or object-oriented languages, such as C++ and Java, typically rely on mutable references to create linked lists.

Contents

History

Linked lists were developed in 1955-56 by Allen Newell, Cliff Shaw and Herbert Simon at RAND Corporation as the primary data structure for their Information Processing Language. IPL was used by the authors to develop several early artificial intelligence programs, including the Logic Theory Machine, the General Problem Solver, and a computer chess program. Reports on their work appeared in IRE Transactions on Information Theory in 1956, and several conference proceedings from 1957-1959, including Proceedings of the Western Joint Computer Conference in 1957 and 1958, and Information Processing (Proceedings of the first UNESCO International Conference on Information Processing) in 1959. The now-classic diagram consisting of blocks representing list nodes with arrows pointing to successive list nodes appears in "Programming the Logic Theory Machine" by Newell and Shaw in Proc. WJCC, February 1957. Newell and Simon were recognized with the ACM Turing Award in 1975 for having "made basic contributions to artificial intelligence, the psychology of human cognition, and list processing".

The problem of machine translation for natural language processing led Victor Yngve at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to use linked lists as data structures in his COMIT programming language for computer research in the field of linguistics. A report on this language entitled "A programming language for mechanical translation" appeared in Mechanical Translation in 1958.

LISP, standing for list processor, was created by John McCarthy in 1958 while he was at MIT and in 1960 he published its design in a paper in the Communications of the ACM, entitled "Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and Their Computation by Machine, Part I". One of LISP's major data structures is the linked list.

By the early 1960s, the utility of both linked lists and languages which use these structures as their primary data representation was well established. Bert Green of the MIT Lincoln Laboratory published a review article entitled "Computer languages for symbol manipulation" in IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics in March 1961 which summarized the advantages of the linked list approach. A later review article, "A Comparison of list-processing computer languages" by Bobrow and Raphael, appeared in Communications of the ACM in April 1964.

Several operating systems developed by Technical Systems Consultants (originally of West Lafayette Indiana, and later of Chapel Hill, North Carolina) used singly linked lists as file structures. A directory entry pointed to the first sector of a file, and succeeding portions of the file were located by traversing pointers. Systems using this technique included Flex (for the Motorola 6800 CPU), mini-Flex (same CPU), and Flex9 (for the Motorola 6809 CPU). A variant developed by TSC for and marketed by Smoke Signal Broadcasting in California, used doubly linked lists in the same manner.

The TSS/360 operating system, developed by IBM for the System 360/370 machines, used a double linked list for their file system catalog. The directory structure was similar to Unix, where a directory could contain files and/or other directories and extend to any depth. A utility flea was created to fix file system problems after a crash, since modified portions of the file catalog were sometimes in memory when a crash occurred. Problems were detected by comparing the forward and backward links for consistency. If a forward link was corrupt, then if a backward link to the infected node was found, the forward link was set to the node with the backward link. A humorous comment in the source code where this utility was invoked stated "Everyone knows a flea collar gets rid of bugs in cats".

Basic concepts and nomenclature

Each record of a linked list is often called an element or node.

The field of each node that contains the address of the next node is usually called the next link or next pointer. The remaining fields are known as the data, information, value, cargo, or payload fields.

The head of a list is its first node, and the tail is the list minus that node (or a pointer thereto). In Lisp and some derived languages, the tail may be called the CDR (pronounced could-er) of the list, while the payload of the head node may be called the CAR.

Linear and circular lists

In the last node of a list, the link field often contains a null reference, a special value that is interpreted by programs as meaning "there is no such node". A less common convention is to make it point to the first node of the list; in that case the list is said to be circular or circularly linked; otherwise it is said to be open or linear.

Circularly-linked-list.svg
A circular linked list

Singly-, doubly-, and multiply-linked lists

Singly-linked lists contain nodes which have a data field as well as a next field, which points to the next node in the linked list.

Singly-linked-list.svg
A singly-linked list whose nodes contain two fields: an integer value and a link to the next node

In a doubly-linked list, each node contains, besides the next-node link, a second link field pointing to the previous node in the sequence. The two links may be called forward(s) and backwards, or next and prev(ious).

Doubly-linked-list.svg
A doubly-linked list whose nodes contain three fields: an integer value, the link forward to the next node, and the link backward to the previous node

The technique known as XOR-linking allows a doubly-linked list to be implemented using a single link field in each node. However, this technique requires the ability to do bit operations on addresses, and therefore may not be available in some high-level languages.

In a multiply-linked list, each node contains two or more link fields, each field being used to connect the same set of data records in a different order (e.g., by name, by department, by date of birth, etc.). (While doubly-linked lists can be seen as special cases of multiply-linked list, the fact that the two orders are opposite to each other leads to simpler and more efficient algorithms, so they are usually treated as a separate case.)

In the case of a doubly circular linked list, the only change that occurs is the end, or "tail" of the said list is linked back to the front, "head", of the list and vice versa.

Sentinel nodes

In some implementations, an extra sentinel or dummy node may be added before the first data record and/or after the last one. This convention simplifies and accelerates some list-handling algorithms, by ensuring that all links can be safely dereferenced and that every list (even one that contains no data elements) always has a "first" and "last" node.

Empty lists

An empty list is a list that contains no data records. This is usually the same as saying that it has zero nodes. If sentinel nodes are being used, the list is usually said to be empty when it has only sentinel nodes.

Hash linking

The link fields need not be physically part of the nodes. If the data records are stored in an array and referenced by their indices, the link field may be stored in a separate array with the same indices as the data records.

List handles

Since a reference to the first node gives access to the whole list, that reference is often called the address, pointer, or handle of the latter. Algorithms that manipulate linked lists usually get such handles to the input lists and return the handles to the resulting lists. In fact, in the context of such algorithms, the word "list" often means "list handle". In some situations, however, it may be convenient to refer to a list by a handle that consists of two links, pointing to its first and last nodes.

Combining alternatives

The alternatives listed above may be arbitrarily combined in almost every way, so one may have circular doubly-linked lists without sentinels, circular singly-linked lists with sentinels, etc.

Tradeoffs

As with most choices in computer programming and design, no method is well suited to all circumstances. A linked list data structure might work well in one case, but cause problems in another. This is a list of some of the common tradeoffs involving linked list structures.

Linked lists vs. dynamic arrays

  Linked
list		 Array Dynamic
array
Indexing Θ(n) Θ(1) Θ(1)
Insertion/deletion at end Θ(1) N/A Θ(1)
Insertion/deletion in middle Θ(1) N/A Θ(n)
Wasted space (average) Θ(n) 0 Θ(n)

A dynamic array is a data structure that allocates all elements contiguously in memory, and keeps a count of the current number of elements. If the space reserved for the dynamic array is exceeded, it is reallocated and (possibly) copied, an expensive operation.

Linked lists have several advantages over dynamic arrays. Insertion of an element at a specific point of a list is a constant-time operation, whereas insertion in a dynamic array at random locations will require moving half of the elements on average, and all the elements in the worst case. While one can "delete" an element from an array in constant time by somehow marking its slot as "vacant", this causes fragmentation that impedes the performance of iteration.

Moreover, arbitrarily many elements may be inserted into a linked list, limited only by the total memory available; while a dynamic array will eventually fill up its underlying array data structure and have to reallocate — an expensive operation, one that may not even be possible if memory is fragmented. Similarly, an array from which many elements are removed may have to be resized in order to avoid wasting too much space.

On the other hand, dynamic arrays (as well as fixed-size array data structures) allow constant-time random access, while linked lists allow only sequential access to elements. Singly-linked lists, in fact, can only be traversed in one direction. This makes linked lists unsuitable for applications where it's useful to look up an element by its index quickly, such as heapsort. Sequential access on arrays and dynamic arrays is also faster than on linked lists on many machines, because they have optimal locality of reference and thus make good use of data caching.

Another disadvantage of linked lists is the extra storage needed for references, which often makes them impractical for lists of small data items such as characters or boolean values, because the storage overhead for the links may exceed by a factor of two or more the size of the data. In contrast, a dynamic array requires only the space for the data itself (and a very small amount of control data).[note 1] It can also be slow, and with a naïve allocator, wasteful, to allocate memory separately for each new element, a problem generally solved using memory pools.

Some hybrid solutions try to combine the advantages of the two representations. Unrolled linked lists store several elements in each list node, increasing cache performance while decreasing memory overhead for references. CDR coding does both these as well, by replacing references with the actual data referenced, which extends off the end of the referencing record.

A good example that highlights the pros and cons of using dynamic arrays vs. linked lists is by implementing a program that resolves the Josephus problem. The Josephus problem is an election method that works by having a group of people stand in a circle. Starting at a predetermined person, you count around the circle n times. Once you reach the nth person, take them out of the circle and have the members close the circle. Then count around the circle the same n times and repeat the process, until only one person is left. That person wins the election. This shows the strengths and weaknesses of a linked list vs. a dynamic array, because if you view the people as connected nodes in a circular linked list then it shows how easily the linked list is able to delete nodes (as it only has to rearrange the links to the different nodes). However, the linked list will be poor at finding the next person to remove and will need to search through the list until it finds that person. A dynamic array, on the other hand, will be poor at deleting nodes (or elements) as it cannot remove one node without individually shifting all the elements up the list by one. However, it is exceptionally easy to find the nth person in the circle by directly referencing them by their position in the array.

The list ranking problem concerns the efficient conversion of a linked list representation into an array. Although trivial for a conventional computer, solving this problem by a parallel algorithm is complicated and has been the subject of much research.

Singly-linked linear lists vs. other lists

While doubly-linked and/or circular lists have advantages over singly-linked linear lists, linear lists offer some advantages that make them preferable in some situations.

For one thing, a singly-linked linear list is a recursive data structure, because it contains a pointer to a smaller object of the same type. For that reason, many operations on singly-linked linear lists (such as merging two lists, or enumerating the elements in reverse order) often have very simple recursive algorithms, much simpler than any solution using iterative commands. While one can adapt those recursive solutions for doubly-linked and circularly-linked lists, the procedures generally need extra arguments and more complicated base cases.

Linear singly-linked lists also allow tail-sharing, the use of a common final portion of sub-list as the terminal portion of two different lists. In particular, if a new node is added at the beginning of a list, the former list remains available as the tail of the new one — a simple example of a persistent data structure. Again, this is not true with the other variants: a node may never belong to two different circular or doubly-linked lists.

In particular, end-sentinel nodes can be shared among singly-linked non-circular lists. One may even use the same end-sentinel node for every such list. In Lisp, for example, every proper list ends with a link to a special node, denoted by nil or (), whose CAR and CDR links point to itself. Thus a Lisp procedure can safely take the CAR or CDR of any list.

Indeed, the advantages of the fancy variants are often limited to the complexity of the algorithms, not in their efficiency. A circular list, in particular, can usually be emulated by a linear list together with two variables that point to the first and last nodes, at no extra cost.

Doubly-linked vs. singly-linked

Double-linked lists require more space per node (unless one uses xor-linking), and their elementary operations are more expensive; but they are often easier to manipulate because they allow sequential access to the list in both directions. In particular, one can insert or delete a node in a constant number of operations given only that node's address. To do the same in a singly-linked list, one must have the previous node's address. Some algorithms require access in both directions. On the other hand, doubly-linked lists do not allow tail-sharing and cannot be used as persistent data structures.

Circularly-linked vs. linearly-linked

A circularly linked list may be a natural option to represent arrays that are naturally circular, e.g. the corners of a polygon, a pool of buffers that are used and released in FIFO order, or a set of processes that should be time-shared in round-robin order. In these applications, a pointer to any node serves as a handle to the whole list.

With a circular list, a pointer to the last node gives easy access also to the first node, by following one link. Thus, in applications that require access to both ends of the list (e.g., in the implementation of a queue), a circular structure allows one to handle the structure by a single pointer, instead of two.

A circular list can be split into two circular lists, in constant time, by giving the addresses of the last node of each piece. The operation consists in swapping the contents of the link fields of those two nodes. Applying the same operation to any two nodes in two distinct lists joins the two list into one. This property greatly simplifies some algorithms and data structures, such as the quad-edge and face-edge.

The simplest representation for an empty circular list (when such thing makes sense) has no nodes, and is represented by a null pointer. With this choice, many algorithms have to test for this special case, and handle it separately. By contrast, the use of null to denote an empty linear list is more natural and often creates fewer special cases.

Using sentinel nodes

Sentinel node may simplify certain list operations, by ensuring that the next and/or previous nodes exist for every element, and that even empty lists have at least one node. One may also use a sentinel node at the end of the list, with an appropriate data field, to eliminate some end-of-list tests. For example, when scanning the list looking for a node with a given value x, setting the sentinel's data field to x makes it unnecessary to test for end-of-list inside the loop. Another example is the merging two sorted lists: if their sentinels have data fields set to +∞, the choice of the next output node does not need special handling for empty lists.

However, sentinel nodes use up extra space (especially in applications that use many short lists), and they may complicate other operations (such as the creation of a new empty list).

However, if the circular list is used merely to simulate a linear list, one may avoid some of this complexity by adding a single sentinel node to every list, between the last and the first data nodes. With this convention, an empty list consists of the sentinel node alone, pointing to itself via the next-node link. The list handle should then be a pointer to the last data node, before the sentinel, if the list is not empty; or to the sentinel itself, if the list is empty.

The same trick can be used to simplify the handling of a doubly-linked linear list, by turning it into a circular doubly-linked list with a single sentinel node. However, in this case, the handle should be a single pointer to the dummy node itself.[1]

Linked list operations

When manipulating linked lists in-place, care must be taken to not use values that you have invalidated in previous assignments. This makes algorithms for inserting or deleting linked list nodes somewhat subtle. This section gives pseudocode for adding or removing nodes from singly, doubly, and circularly linked lists in-place. Throughout we will use null to refer to an end-of-list marker or sentinel, which may be implemented in a number of ways.

Linearly-linked lists

Singly-linked lists

Our node data structure will have two fields. We also keep a variable firstNode which always points to the first node in the list, or is null for an empty list.

 record Node {
    data // The data being stored in the node
    next // A reference to the next node, null for last node
 }

 record List {
     Node firstNode   // points to first node of list; null for empty list
 }

Traversal of a singly-linked list is simple, beginning at the first node and following each next link until we come to the end:

 node := list.firstNode
 while node not null {
     (do something with node.data)
     node := node.next
 }

The following code inserts a node after an existing node in a singly linked list. The diagram shows how it works. Inserting a node before an existing one cannot be done directly; instead, you have to keep track of the previous node and insert a node after it.

Singly linked list insert after.png
 function insertAfter(Node node, Node newNode) { // insert newNode after node
     newNode.next := node.next
     node.next    := newNode
 }

Inserting at the beginning of the list requires a separate function. This requires updating firstNode.

 function insertBeginning(List list, Node newNode) { // insert node before current first node
     newNode.next   := list.firstNode
     list.firstNode := newNode
 }

Similarly, we have functions for removing the node after a given node, and for removing a node from the beginning of the list. The diagram demonstrates the former. To find and remove a particular node, one must again keep track of the previous element.

Singly linked list delete after.png
 function removeAfter(node node) { // remove node past this one
     obsoleteNode := node.next
     node.next := node.next.next
     destroy obsoleteNode
 }

 function removeBeginning(List list) { // remove first node
     obsoleteNode := list.firstNode
     list.firstNode := list.firstNode.next          // point past deleted node
     destroy obsoleteNode
 }

Notice that removeBeginning() sets list.firstNode to null when removing the last node in the list.

Since we can't iterate backwards, efficient "insertBefore" or "removeBefore" operations are not possible.

Appending one linked list to another can be inefficient unless a reference to the tail is kept as part of the List structure, because we must traverse the entire first list in order to find the tail, and then append the second list to this. Thus, if two linearly-linked lists are each of length n, list appending has asymptotic time complexity of O(n). In the Lisp family of languages, list appending is provided by the append procedure.

Many of the special cases of linked list operations can be eliminated by including a dummy element at the front of the list. This ensures that there are no special cases for the beginning of the list and renders both insertBeginning() and removeBeginning() unnecessary. In this case, the first useful data in the list will be found at list.firstNode.next.

Circularly-linked list

In a circularly linked list, all nodes are linked in a continuous circle, without using null. For lists with a front and a back (such as a queue), one stores a reference to the last node in the list. The next node after the last node is the first node. Elements can be added to the back of the list and removed from the front in constant time.

Circularly-linked lists can be either singly or doubly linked.

Both types of circularly-linked lists benefit from the ability to traverse the full list beginning at any given node. This often allows us to avoid storing firstNode and lastNode, although if the list may be empty we need a special representation for the empty list, such as a lastNode variable which points to some node in the list or is null if it's empty; we use such a lastNode here. This representation significantly simplifies adding and removing nodes with a non-empty list, but empty lists are then a special case.

Algorithms

Assuming that someNode is some node in a non-empty circular singly-linked list, this code iterates through that list starting with someNode:

 function iterate(someNode)
   if someNode  ≠ null
     node := someNode
     do
       do something with node.value
       node := node.next
     while node ≠ someNode

Notice that the test "while node ≠ someNode" must be at the end of the loop. If it were replaced by the test "" at the beginning of the loop, the procedure would fail whenever the list had only one node.

This function inserts a node "newNode" into a circular linked list after a given node "node". If "node" is null, it assumes that the list is empty.

 function insertAfter(Node node, Node newNode)
     if node = null
       newNode.next := newNode
     else
       newNode.next := node.next
       node.next := newNode

Suppose that "L" is a variable pointing to the last node of a circular linked list (or null if the list is empty). To append "newNode" to the end of the list, one may do

 insertAfter(L, newNode)
 L := newNode

To insert "newNode" at the beginning of the list, one may do

 insertAfter(L, newNode)
 if L = null
   L := newNode

Linked lists using arrays of nodes

Languages that do not support any type of reference can still create links by replacing pointers with array indices. The approach is to keep an array of records, where each record has integer fields indicating the index of the next (and possibly previous) node in the array. Not all nodes in the array need be used. If records are also not supported, parallel arrays can often be used instead.

As an example, consider the following linked list record that uses arrays instead of pointers:

 record Entry {
    integer next // index of next entry in array
    integer prev // previous entry (if double-linked)
    string name
    real balance
 }

By creating an array of these structures, and an integer variable to store the index of the first element, a linked list can be built:

integer listHead
Entry Records[1000]

Links between elements are formed by placing the array index of the next (or previous) cell into the Next or Prev field within a given element. For example:

Index Next Prev Name Balance
0 1 4 Jones, John 123.45
1 -1 0 Smith, Joseph 234.56
2 (listHead) 4 -1 Adams, Adam 0.00
3 Ignore, Ignatius 999.99
4 0 2 Another, Anita 876.54
5
6
7

In the above example, ListHead would be set to 2, the location of the first entry in the list. Notice that entry 3 and 5 through 7 are not part of the list. These cells are available for any additions to the list. By creating a ListFree integer variable, a free list could be created to keep track of what cells are available. If all entries are in use, the size of the array would have to be increased or some elements would have to be deleted before new entries could be stored in the list.

The following code would traverse the list and display names and account balance:

i := listHead
while i >= 0 { '// loop through the list
     print i, Records[i].name, Records[i].balance // print entry
     i := Records[i].next
}

When faced with a choice, the advantages of this approach include:

This approach has one main disadvantage, however: it creates and manages a private memory space for its nodes. This leads to the following issues:

For these reasons, this approach is mainly used for languages that do not support dynamic memory allocation. These disadvantages are also mitigated if the maximum size of the list is known at the time the array is created.

Language support

Many programming languages such as Lisp and Scheme have singly linked lists built in. In many functional languages, these lists are constructed from nodes, each called a cons or cons cell. The cons has two fields: the car, a reference to the data for that node, and the cdr, a reference to the next node. Although cons cells can be used to build other data structures, this is their primary purpose.

In languages that support abstract data types or templates, linked list ADTs or templates are available for building linked lists. In other languages, linked lists are typically built using references together with records. Here is a complete example in C:

#include <stdio.h>    /* for printf */
#include <stdlib.h>   /* for malloc */
 
typedef struct node {
	int data;
	struct node *next; /* pointer to next element in list */
} LLIST;
 
LLIST *list_add(LLIST **p, int i);  /* Function definition to add an element */
void list_remove(LLIST **p);        /* Function definition to remove element */
LLIST **list_search(LLIST **n, int i); /* Function definition to search the list */
void list_print(LLIST *n);             /* Function definition to print the list */
/****************************************************************/
/*  Function: Add an element to our list                        */
/*                                                              */
/*   Parameters: **p is the node that we wish to insert at.     */
/*               if the node is the null insert it at the beginning    */
/*               Other wise put it in the next space                   */
 
 
LLIST *list_add(LLIST **p, int i)
{
	if (p == NULL)           /*checks to see if the pointer points somewhere in space*/
		return NULL;
 
	LLIST *n = malloc(sizeof(LLIST));   /* creates a new node of the correct data size */
	if (n == NULL)
		return NULL;
 
	n->next = *p; /* the previous element (*p) now becomes the "next" element */
	*p = n;       /* add new empty element to the front (head) of the list */
	n->data = i;
 
	return *p;
}
 
void list_remove(LLIST **p) /* remove head */
{
	if (p != NULL && *p != NULL)
	{
		LLIST *n = *p;
		*p = (*p)->next;
		free(n);
	}
}
 
LLIST **list_search(LLIST **n, int i)
{
	if (n == NULL)
		return NULL;
 
	while (*n != NULL)
	{
		if ((*n)->data == i)
		{
			return n;
		}
		n = &(*n)->next;
	}
	return NULL;
}
 
void list_print(LLIST *n)
{
	if (n == NULL)
	{
		printf("list is empty\n");
	}
	while (n != NULL)
	{
		printf("print %p %p %d\n", n, n->next, n->data);
		n = n->next;
	}
}
 
int main(void)
{
	LLIST *n = NULL;
 
	list_add(&n, 0); /* list: 0 */
	list_add(&n, 1); /* list: 1 0 */
	list_add(&n, 2); /* list: 2 1 0 */
	list_add(&n, 3); /* list: 3 2 1 0 */
	list_add(&n, 4); /* list: 4 3 2 1 0 */
	list_print(n);
	list_remove(&n);                 /* remove first (4) */
	list_remove(&n->next);           /* remove new second (2) */
	list_remove(list_search(&n, 1)); /* remove cell containing 1 (first) */
	list_remove(&n->next);           /* remove second to last node (0) */
	list_remove(&n);                 /* remove last (3) */
	list_print(n);
 
	return 0;
}

Internal and external storage

When constructing a linked list, one is faced with the choice of whether to store the data of the list directly in the linked list nodes, called internal storage, or merely to store a reference to the data, called external storage. Internal storage has the advantage of making access to the data more efficient, requiring less storage overall, having better locality of reference, and simplifying memory management for the list (its data is allocated and deallocated at the same time as the list nodes).

External storage, on the other hand, has the advantage of being more generic, in that the same data structure and machine code can be used for a linked list no matter what the size of the data is. It also makes it easy to place the same data in multiple linked lists. Although with internal storage the same data can be placed in multiple lists by including multiple next references in the node data structure, it would then be necessary to create separate routines to add or delete cells based on each field. It is possible to create additional linked lists of elements that use internal storage by using external storage, and having the cells of the additional linked lists store references to the nodes of the linked list containing the data.

In general, if a set of data structures needs to be included in multiple linked lists, external storage is the best approach. If a set of data structures need to be included in only one linked list, then internal storage is slightly better, unless a generic linked list package using external storage is available. Likewise, if different sets of data that can be stored in the same data structure are to be included in a single linked list, then internal storage would be fine.

Another approach that can be used with some languages involves having different data structures, but all have the initial fields, including the next (and prev if double linked list) references in the same location. After defining separate structures for each type of data, a generic structure can be defined that contains the minimum amount of data shared by all the other structures and contained at the top (beginning) of the structures. Then generic routines can be created that use the minimal structure to perform linked list type operations, but separate routines can then handle the specific data. This approach is often used in message parsing routines, where several types of messages are received, but all start with the same set of fields, usually including a field for message type. The generic routines are used to add new messages to a queue when they are received, and remove them from the queue in order to process the message. The message type field is then used to call the correct routine to process the specific type of message.

Example of internal and external storage

Suppose you wanted to create a linked list of families and their members. Using internal storage, the structure might look like the following:

 record member { // member of a family
     member next
     string firstName
     integer age
 }
 record family { // the family itself
     family next
     string lastName
     string address
     member members // head of list of members of this family
 }

To print a complete list of families and their members using internal storage, we could write:

 aFamily := Families // start at head of families list
 while aFamily ≠ null { // loop through list of families
     print information about family
     aMember := aFamily.members // get head of list of this family's members
     while aMember ≠ null { // loop through list of members
         print information about member
         aMember := aMember.next
     }
     aFamily := aFamily.next
 }

Using external storage, we would create the following structures:

 record node { // generic link structure
     node next
     pointer data // generic pointer for data at node
 }
 record member { // structure for family member
     string firstName
     integer age
 }
 record family { // structure for family
     string lastName
     string address
     node members // head of list of members of this family
 }

To print a complete list of families and their members using external storage, we could write:

 famNode := Families // start at head of families list
 while famNode ≠ null { // loop through list of families
     aFamily := (family)famNode.data // extract family from node
     print information about family
     memNode := aFamily.members // get list of family members
     while memNode ≠ null { // loop through list of members
         aMember := (member)memNode.data // extract member from node
         print information about member
         memNode := memNode.next
     }
     famNode := famNode.next
 }

Notice that when using external storage, an extra step is needed to extract the record from the node and cast it into the proper data type. This is because both the list of families and the list of members within the family are stored in two linked lists using the same data structure (node), and this language does not have parametric types.

As long as the number of families that a member can belong to is known at compile time, internal storage works fine. If, however, a member needed to be included in an arbitrary number of families, with the specific number known only at run time, external storage would be necessary.

Speeding up search

Finding a specific element in a linked list, even if it is sorted, normally requires O(n) time (linear search). This is one of the primary disadvantages of linked lists over other data structures. In addition to the variants discussed above, below are two simple ways to improve search time.

In an unordered list, one simple heuristic for decreasing average search time is the move-to-front heuristic, which simply moves an element to the beginning of the list once it is found. This scheme, handy for creating simple caches, ensures that the most recently used items are also the quickest to find again.

Another common approach is to "index" a linked list using a more efficient external data structure. For example, one can build a red-black tree or hash table whose elements are references to the linked list nodes. Multiple such indexes can be built on a single list. The disadvantage is that these indexes may need to be updated each time a node is added or removed (or at least, before that index is used again).

Related data structures

Both stacks and queues are often implemented using linked lists, and simply restrict the type of operations which are supported.

The skip list is a linked list augmented with layers of pointers for quickly jumping over large numbers of elements, and then descending to the next layer. This process continues down to the bottom layer, which is the actual list.

A binary tree can be seen as a type of linked list where the elements are themselves linked lists of the same nature. The result is that each node may include a reference to the first node of one or two other linked lists, which, together with their contents, form the subtrees below that node.

An unrolled linked list is a linked list in which each node contains an array of data values. This leads to improved cache performance, since more list elements are contiguous in memory, and reduced memory overhead, because less metadata needs to be stored for each element of the list.

A hash table may use linked lists to store the chains of items that hash to the same position in the hash table.

A heap shares some of the ordering properties of a linked list, but is almost always implemented using an array. Instead of references from node to node, the next and previous data indexes are calculated using the current data's index.

Notes

  1. ↑ The amount of control data required for a dynamic array is usually of the form K+B*n, where K is a per-array constant, B is a per-dimension constant, and n is the number of dimensions. K and B are typically on the order of 10 bytes.

References

  1. ↑ Ford, William and Topp, William Data Structures with C++ using STL Second Edition (2002). Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0-13-085850-1, pp. 466-467

External links

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Associative array · Multimap · Set · Multiset · Hash table
Lists
Double-ended queue · Linked list · Queue · Stack · Circular Queue/Buffer  · Skip list
Trees
Graphs
Directed graph · Directed acyclic graph · Binary decision diagram
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