Impressions of Week 8: Linked List

In week 8, we learned about another data structure called Linked List which was defined as linear set of nodes. The front of the sequence is known as the head, whereas the back of the sequence is known as the tail. In this class we will be viewing linked list as a sequence of nodes, each with a value and a reference to the next node. We have been highly encouraged to draw diagrams like below when working through practice examples and such. 

In class, we defined two classes LLNode to represent a single node and LinkedList to represent the linked list as whole. These were created in class using the following code.

 In order to perform certain actions such as adding a value in the list thus increasing the size or deleting the value thus decreasing the size, would require a programmer to be able to walk the list. Walking a list is usually of the following general form

           

            cur_node = self.front

            while <some condition here>

                        #do something here…

                        cur_node = cur_node.nxt

                        #after you do something you this allows you to move on the next

Let’s walk through the following __contains__ function which was discussed in class this week. 

This function returns a Boolean statement as to whether or not the linked list contains the desired value. Our while condition is to walk through the entire linked list, and we further check that if the value of the cur_node matched the value we passed on, then we return True and exist the loop. Else, we would move on the next list, and perform similar action until we find out desired value and return true. If it be the case that we cannot find the value after walking along the entire linked list, then we simply return False and exist the while loop. 

I have also read many of my other classmates slog from which Justin's blog post on Linked List is definitely worth a read.

Until next time everyone.