In this Lecture we will

• Learn about linked lists

• Become aware of the basic properties of linked lists
• Explore the insertion and deletion operations on linked
lists
• Discover how to build and manipulate a linked list

1
 Introduction
Data can be organized and processed sequentially
using an array, called a sequential list
Problems with an array
Array size is fixed
Unsorted array: searching for an item is slow
Sorted array: insertion and deletion is slow

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 Singly link list
All the nodes in a singly linked list are arranged
sequentially by linking with a pointer.
A singly linked list can grow or shrink, because it is a
dynamic data structure.

3
figure explains the different
operations on a singly linked list.

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 Insertion and Deletion

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 Linked Lists
Linked list: a list of items (nodes), in which the order
of the nodes is determined by the address, called the
link, stored in each node

Link field in last node

is NULL
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 Linked Lists (cont'd.)
Because each node of a linked list has two components,
we need to declare each node as a class or struct
Data type of a node depends on the specific application
The link component of each node is a pointer

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 Linked Lists: Some Properties

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 Linked Lists: Some Properties (cont'd.)
current = head;
Copies value of head into current

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 Linked Lists: Some Properties (cont'd.)
current = current->link;

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 Traversing a Linked List
The basic operations of a linked list are:
Search to determine if an item is in the list
Insert an item in the list
Delete an item from the list
Traversal: given a pointer to the first node of the list,
step through the nodes of the list

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 Traversing a Linked List (cont'd.)
To traverse a linked list:

Example:

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 Item Insertion and Deletion
Consider the following definition of a node:

We will use the following variable declaration:

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 Insertion
Consider the following linked list:

A new node with info 50 is to be created and

inserted after p

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 Insertion (cont'd.)

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 Insertion (cont'd.)
Using two pointers, we can simplify the insertion code
somewhat

To insert newNode between p and q:

The order in which these statements

execute does not matter

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 Insertion (cont'd.)

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 Deletion

Node with info 34 is removed from the list, but

memory is still occupied; node is dangling
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 Deletion (cont’d.)

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 Building a Linked List
If data is unsorted
The list will be unsorted
Can build a linked list forward or backward
Forward: a new node is always inserted at the end of the
linked list
Backward: a new node is always inserted at the
beginning of the list

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 Building a Linked List Forward
You need three pointers to build the list:
One to point to the first node in the list, which cannot be
moved
One to point to the last node in the list
One to create the new node

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 Building a Linked List Forward
(cont’d.)

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 Building a Linked List Forward
(cont’d.)

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 Building a Linked List Forward
(cont'd.)

We now repeat statements 1 through 6b three more times:

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 Building a Linked List Forward
(cont’d.)

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 Building a Linked List Backward
The algorithm is:
Initialize first to NULL
For each item in the list
 Create the new node, newNode
 Store the item in newNode
 Insert newNode before first
 Update the value of the pointer first

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 Building a Linked List Backward
(cont’d.)

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