Introduction to Linked Lists

Linked lists are an important data structure in computer science. They are used to store and manipulate a collection of elements. Unlike arrays, linked lists do not require contiguous memory allocation.

Each element in a linked list contains a value and a reference to the next element in the list. This means that the elements are connected in a chain-like structure, where each element points to the next element.

Here is an example of a simple linked list implementation in Java:

1{...code}

In the above code, we define a Node class that represents an element in the linked list. Each node has a data field to store the value and a next field to point to the next node in the list.

The LinkedList class is used to manage the linked list. It has a head field that points to the first element in the list. The insert method adds a new element to the end of the list, and the display method prints the elements of the list.

Linked lists have several advantages over arrays. First, they allow for efficient insertion and deletion operations, as the elements do not need to be shifted. Second, they can dynamically grow and shrink in size, as memory is allocated only when new elements are added. Lastly, linked lists can easily be extended to implement other data structures, such as stacks and queues.

To summarize, linked lists are a flexible and efficient data structure that provides advantages over arrays. They are widely used in various algorithms and data manipulation tasks.

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}

class Node {

  int data;

  Node next;

​

  public Node(int data) {

    this.data = data;

    this.next = null;

  }

}

​

public class LinkedList {

  Node head;

​

  public LinkedList() {

    this.head = null;

  }

​

  public void insert(int data) {

    Node newNode = new Node(data);

    if (head == null) {

      head = newNode;

    } else {

      Node current = head;

      while (current.next != null) {

        current = current.next;

      }

      current.next = newNode;

    }

  }