What's a Linked List, Anyway? [Part 1]

What's a Linked List, Anyway? [Part 2]

Introduction

• like the game Treasure Hunt, where each clue includes the information about the next clue
• a data structure consisting of a collection of nodes that together represent a sequence
• a linear collection of data elements where each element contains an address of the next element
• as opposed to arrays, where data is stored in sequential blocks of memory instead, each element contains an address of the next element
• a list can contain any type of data: strings, characters, numbers
• the elements can be unsorted or sorted
• they can contain duplicate elements or all unique elements

Elements

Nodes

• hold certain data
• hold pointers/references/links to other nodes

Pointers

• reference to another node
• no node points to the head node
• tail node (last node) points to NULL