Real-world applications of linked list

Linked lists have many practical applications in the real world. Here are a few examples:

1. Text editors: Text editors often use linked lists to implement their undo/redo functionality. A new node indicating the state of the document at that point is added to the linked list each time a modification is made to the text. The text editor simply moves to the relevant node in the linked list when a user undoes or redoes an action.

2. Internet: When you visit a website, your browser often sends multiple requests to the server for different resources. These requests are typically managed by a linked list data structure that keeps track of the order in which the resources are requested and received.

3. Operating systems: Linked lists are used in operating systems to manage various system resources such as memory, processes, and file systems. For example, linked list stores the process control block for each process in an operating system, allowing the operating system to efficiently manage the scheduling of processes.

4. Computer networks: Linked lists are used in network protocols to manage the flow of data between devices. It is used to keep track of the packets that are sent and received, and to ensure that data is delivered reliably and in order.

5. Image processing: Linked lists can be used to represent the edges of an image, which can be helpful in performing edge detection and other image processing tasks.

6. Music and media players: Linked lists can be used to implement playlists in music and media players. Each node in the linked list represents a song or media item, and the next node represents the next item in the playlist.

Advantages of linked list:

Linked lists provide numerous advantages in programming. Some of them include:

• Dynamic size: Linked lists do not have a fixed size, so elements can be added or removed easily as required. This provides efficient working with data whose size can change dynamically.
• Efficient insertion and Deletion: Inserting and deletion of elements in linked list has unit time complexity. Hence, it is east and fast.
• Memory efficiency: As the memory is not contiguous, memory utilization is better. Also, linked lists use only as much memory as needed which makes them memory efficient.
• Versatility: Linked lists are used to implement various abstract data types such as stacks, queues, trees, and graphs.

Disadvantages of linked list:

Like every other data structure, linked lists have certain disadvantages. A few of the key disadvantages are:

• Sequential access: Linked lists do not provide efficient random access to elements like arrays do. To access a specific element in a linked list, the list needs to be traversed sequentially starting from the head node which is an O(n) operation. This can make operations like binary search less efficient.
• Complex operations: Due to the use of pointers, some operations on linked lists, such as reversing the list or merging two lists, can be more complex to implement than similar operations on arrays.
• Lack of cache locality: Linked lists do not have good cache locality compared to other data structures because the memory is not contiguous. This can result in slower access times due to cache misses.
• Extra memory required: Linked lists require an extra pointer for each node, which takes up extra space in memory.