Doubly Linked Lists

• Deleting from the end of the list

– Have to traverse the entire list to stop right in front of tail to delete it,
so O(n)
– With head and tail pointer, still O(n), tail has to point to the node in
front of the original tail (original tail’s predecessor).
– To avoid this, redefine the linked list so that each node has 2 pointers,
one to the successor and one to the predecessor
 Which Operation of DLL is More
Efficient than SLL
• ?
 Circular Lists
• In some situations, a circular list is needed in
which nodes form a ring
– E.g., resource sharing among process
– The pointer current points to the next process to
which the resource should be assigned
Insertion at the Front and End of a
Circular List

Time complexities?
 Circular List (cont’d)
• Time complexity of deletion from the end?

• Circular doubly linked list

Define Circular Linked List
Example of Add a Node to the Head of
a Circular LinkedList
• Different Cases
• Discuss for each case
 Self-Organizing Lists
• Linked lists have one serious drawback
– Sequential scanning to locate a searched-for element
– Time complexity of search is O(n)

• Can improve search efficiency by dynamically organizing the list in a

certain manner
– Move-to-front method (i.e., Most Recently Used)
• After desired element is located, put it at the beginning
– Transpose method
• After desired element is located, swap it with predecessor
– Count method (i.e., Most Frequently Used)
• Order the list by number of times elements are accessed
– Ordering method
• Order the list using certain criteria
 Self-Organizing Lists (cont’d)
• With first 3 methods, try to locate elements most
likely to be looked for near the beginning of the list
– Move-to-front vs. Transpose
• The ordering method is particularly advantageous
when searching for information that is not in the list,
because the search can terminate without scanning
the entire list
• But, if the desired element is not in the list, the first 3
methods just add a new node at the end of the list
O(1), whereas the ordering method must maintain
the order
 Optimal Static Ordering
• Analysis of the efficiency of these methods
usually compares their efficiency to that of
optimal static ordering (i.e., all data already
ordered by the frequency of their
occurrence)
• Optimal static ordering requires two passes
through the body of data
– Build the list
– Use the list for search alone
 Optimal Static Ordering (cont’d)
• Example: Find the optimal static ordering of
the following stream of data:

ACBCDADACACCEE

• Optimal static ordering used for comparison

purposes only
An Application
 Sparse Tables
• In many applications, the choice of a table
seems to be the most natural one, but space
considerations may preclude this choice
• Particularly true if only a small portion of the
table is actually used (i.e., a sparse table)
• A sparse table can be replaced by a system of
linked lists
 Sparse Tables (cont’d)
• Consider the problem of storing one semester
grades for 8000 students and 300 classes
• Natural implementation is a 2D array of
classes and students
• Assuming, on the average, students take 4
classes per semester, each column has only 4
cells occupied and the rest (296 or 98.7%) are
wasted
 Sparse Tables (cont’d)
• A better implementation is to use 2 1D arrays
of linked lists
– Each element of array class is a pointer to a linked
list of students taking a class
– Each element of array student is a pointer to a
linked list of the classes taken by a student
• The space needed will be approximately 10%
of the space needed for the sparse table
implementation
 Template DLL
• Make the linked list to store any type of
contents