Linked List Data Structure

A linked list is a linear data structure, in which the elements are not stored at contiguous memory locations. The elements in a linked list are linked using pointers as shown in the below image:

In simple words, a linked list consists of nodes where each node contains a data field and a reference(link) to the next node in the list.

Advantages of Linked Lists

• They are a dynamic in nature which allocates the memory when required.
• Insertion and deletion operations can be easily implemented.
• Stacks and queues can be easily executed.
• Linked List reduces the access time.

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Disadvantages of Linked Lists

• The memory is wasted as pointers require extra memory for storage.
• No element can be accessed randomly; it has to access each node sequentially.
• Reverse Traversing is difficult in linked list.

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Applications of Linked Lists

• Linked lists are used to implement stacks, queues, graphs, etc.
• Linked lists let you insert elements at the beginning and end of the list.
• In Linked Lists we don't need to know the size in advance.

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Types of Linked Lists

There are 3 different implementations of Linked List available, they are:

1. Singly Linked List
2. Doubly Linked List
3. Circular Linked List

Let's know more about them and how they are different from each other.

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Singly Linked List

Singly linked lists contain nodes which have a data part as well as an address part i.e. next, which points to the next node in the sequence of nodes.
The operations we can perform on singly linked lists are insertion, deletion and traversal.

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Doubly Linked List

In a doubly linked list, each node contains a data part and two addresses, one for the previous node and one for the next node.

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Circular Linked List

In circular linked list the last node of the list holds the address of the first node hence forming a circular chain.