Whats the use of linked list?

[the_transltr]

What is the linked list for? Is this analogous to relational database objects?

[R-G]

In computer science, a "linked list" is one of the fundamental data structures, and can be used to implement other data structures.

[WingedPanther]

A linked list can be used to manage a dynamically growing/shrinking list of data. It's primary advantage is for sorting: if each piece of "data" consists of a large data structure, you only have to adjust the links (usually a pointer) rather than copying the data. The biggest disadvantage is in searching through the data, as you have to traverse through all the items on the list preceding it.

[Chinmoy]

Linked list is a data structure with the following specifics::
1>Data is dynamically added or removed.
2>Every data object has two parts-a data part and a link part. Tgether they constitute a node.
3>The list can be traversed only through pointers.
4>Every node is an important constituent of the data.
5>The end of the data is always a leaf end.
6>Tree structures(branched link lists) are used to store data into disks.

[the_transltr]

I know this definitions, can anyone give an example of linked list application to the real world?

[G_Morgan]

Originally Posted by the_transltr

I know this definitions, can anyone give an example of linked list application to the real world?

Usually you use linked lists to implement more specialised data structures like stacks, queues and trees (which are lists of lists).

The type of data structure depends heavily on the use case. Say you want a dictionary but do not know the size of your data set before hand and cannot survive length pauses (making a hash table unsuitable because you cannot guarantee you won't need to rehash). You could use a self balancing tree which is less efficient in general but is more consistent than a hash table. Sometimes consistency is better than overall efficiency (i.e. the worst case often dominates rather than the average case, rehashing might be enough to spoil your day if it's a particularly large hash table).

Generally any case where you don't know the size of your data set can utilise linked lists of some form. You can of course create growable arrays (which basically reallocate and copy the entire array each time it needs to grow) but as mentioned above this has issues if you don't want pauses on large data structures.

[the_transltr]

Thank you all.