Data Structure

UNIT-2
Advantages, Disadvantages and
Applications
• Advantages: Singly Linked List
 Easy to insert and delete -Does not require the shifting of items
during insertions and deletions
 Dynamic Size -Is able to grow in size as needed
• Disadvantages:
 Elements can not accessed randomly.
 Extra space is needed to store pointers- to maintain the logical order of the
elements.
 Loss of data threat is there, if we lose one pointer location then the rest of
linked list elements can not be accessed.
• Applications:
 Linked Lists can be used to represent Graphs

 Linked list is used for maintainingthe free blocks for dynamic memory
allocation.
 Used to implement Queue and Stack Data structures.
 Used for performing arithmetic operations on long integers.
 Used for manipulating polynomials
 Circular Linked List
• Advantages:
 The entire list can be traversed starting from any node (traverse means
visiting every node only once)
• Disadvantages:
 Depending on implementation, inserting at start of list would require
doing
a search for the last node which could be expensive.
 If not traversed carefully, then we could end up in an infinite loop.
 It does not support direct accessing (random accessing/Indexing) of
elements.
• Applications:
 Useful for implementation of queue
 It is also used by the Operating system for job scheduling (eg.
Round-
Robin Algorithm).
 Multiplayer games use a circular list to swap between players in a
loop.
 Helps to implement Advanced data structures like Fibonacci Heap
• Advantages:
Double Linked List
 Can move/search in both directions on list. Thus, if in case any pointer is
lost we can still traverse.
• Disadvantages:
 Extra space is required for the previous pointer.
 All operations require more work to set up previous pointer properly.
• Applications:
 Used in navigation systems where both front and back navigation is
required Eg. Music Player.
 Used by browsers to implement backward and forward navigation of visited
web pages i.e. back and forward button.
 Used by various application to implement Undo and Redo functionality.