What is the time complexity of inserting an element at the end of a singly linke
Practice Questions
Q1
What is the time complexity of inserting an element at the end of a singly linked list?
O(1)
O(n)
O(log n)
O(n^2)
Questions & Step-by-Step Solutions
What is the time complexity of inserting an element at the end of a singly linked list?
Step 1: Understand what a singly linked list is. It is a data structure where each element (node) points to the next one.
Step 2: Know that inserting an element at the end means you need to find the last node in the list.
Step 3: If you do not have a tail pointer (a reference to the last node), you must start from the head (the first node) and go through each node one by one until you reach the last node.
Step 4: This process of going through each node takes time proportional to the number of nodes in the list, which is 'n'.
Step 5: Therefore, the time complexity for inserting an element at the end of a singly linked list without a tail pointer is O(n).