Summary

In this chapter, we studied the concepts that underlie lists, such as nodes and pointers to other nodes. We have discussed singly linked lists, doubly linked lists, and circular linked lists. We have seen various operations that can be applied to these data structures and their implementations using Python.

These types of data structures have certain advantages over arrays. In the case of arrays, insertion and deletion are quite time-consuming as these operations require the shifting of elements downward and upward, respectively, due to contiguous memory allocations. On the other hand, in the case of linked lists, these operations require only changes in pointers. Another advantage of linked lists over arrays is the allowance of a dynamic memory management scheme that allocates memory during the runtime as and when needed, while the array is based on a static memory allocation scheme.

The singly linked list can traverse in a forward direction only, while traversal...